Idea: Illinois as first-primary state

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One pivotal, recurring point of criticism concerning Iowa's first-caucus privilege is its non-representative ethnic makeup: It's 90.2% white as compared with the nation's 60.1% white population.

There is one U.S. state that is some kind of microcosm when it comes to its racial composition: Illinois.

Race	Illinois	USA
White	71.7%	60.1%
African American	14.1%	13.4%
Hispanic-Latino	17.3%	18.5%
Asian	5.6%	5.9%
Native American	0.3%	1.3%
Pacific Islander	0.1%	0.2%
Two or more races	2.7%	2.8%

What are you're thoughts about the Bundy-Winslows-McCallister state getting assigned the prerogative of narrowing down the candidates' list?

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The state might be too populous/big and thus put certain candidates at a disadvantage.

Imagine the costs of running an effective ad campaign in the Chicago DMA (the third largest in the U.S.)

Perhaps, the Democrats could circumvent that problem by allocating each congressional district the same number of delegates, so that Southern Illinois won't be disregarded during the candidates' campaigns.

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I wonder how many parts of Illinois presidential candidates usually visit.
I guess only Chicago, Aurora, Springfield, and Rock Island County.

And what about statewide candidates? Has any gubernatorial or senatorial candidate seen regions of Illinois south of Sangamon County? 🤷🏻‍♂️

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I wonder how many parts of Illinois presidential candidates usually visit.
I guess only Chicago, Aurora, Springfield, and Rock Island County.

And what about statewide candidates? Has any gubernatorial or senatorial candidate seen regions of Illinois south of Sangamon County? 🤷🏻‍♂️

Ted Cruz did 5 events in Illinois in 2016:

2 Chicago area ones (one was in Glen Ellyn in the far west suburbs, no idea where the other was)
Peoria
Decatur
Springfield

The other pieces of information I have on that are that about a quarter of the population lives below I-80 and that for statewide elections some candidates come downstate a lot while others don’t. JB Pritzker was the only one in the last gubernatorial primary who spent much time downstate.

I don’t know about your other question except I remember reading an article in Golf Digest about how someone took Senate candidate Barack Obama on his first trip to the part of Illinois below the Mason Dixon line to golf at a particular course that this person really liked. Obama’s Senate campaign ended up going all over the state and won basically everything from Rockford to Cairo in a huge landslide that teed him up for his presidential run in 2008.

The only statewide politician who’s from that far south is Dick Durbin.

I’m sure you didn’t want that wall of text but I hope that answers your question.

That wasn't a wall, but rather an informative rundown of Illinois campaigning to get the gist.

As a consequence, what you wrote validates my suspicions. Illinois is probably that state among the big ones that attracts the least attention. Plus, from what I've heard, Southern Illinois is quite poor and decayed. Drawing national attention to their problems through an early primary may surely help its inhabitants..

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If primaries are to be staggered, Illinois fits the bill for me - representative of the US ethnically, with a large city, suburbs, exurbs, rurals and a mixture of economic sectors and populations.

Illinois would be good, but Illinois is losing population. Look at census county maps and you see red---why not Georgia or Texas, or some other microcosm....

The second-best microcosm is Wisconsin, which would even had an advantage over Illinois, since it is one of the three bellwether states.

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I wonder what would have happenden if Illinois had been the first primary (caucus?) state back in 2008?
I mean Obama could only have lost, no matter how well he would have fared.
He basically had to perform on Tom Harkin's level in order to not get slayed by the media. Plus he would have had to spend too much time and money for a state that he would win anyway, consequently lacking resources for further campaigns.

Moreover, I wonder what result Hillary ought to have achieved in order to be perceived as the actual "winner". Would she even have had a "birth home" advantage?

And the third guy, whose name I forgot? Would he still have become the runner-up? What parts of Illinois would have been his strongholds?

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Where is the "Horrible idea; Iowa is much better." poll option?

Fixed. 

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I am totally on board with this, and CA, NY, and NJ should be the other new first four states, diverse, large states would help to eliminate candidates who only appeal to one demographic and would never gain traction if not for our current stupid system. Hot take, but smaller fields are a good thing, and it allows people to see who the actual serious contenders are.

I've read your post several times, and I still ain't sure if my sarcasm detector detected sarcasm... 🤔

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^ In many ways, yes (especially for a Democratic candidate focusing intensely on Chicago and/or Cook County), but a huge chunk of Illinois' Republican votes still come from the Chicago area.  I would imagine a GOP primary in Illinois (of this much importance/scope) going something like this:

- A "moderate" or "business wing" candidate who focuses mainly on the Chicagoland suburbs and fundraising in other semi-large population centers with traditionally Republican voters like Peoria, Rockford, Bloomington, etc.
- A "true conservative" who looks to drive up turnout in rural Northern IL, much of Central IL, more ancestrally GOP areas of Southern IL and the outer Chicagoland suburbs.
- A "Trumpist" candidate who looks to win "WWC" voters in ancestrally Democratic areas of Southern IL, the larger small city centers/manufacturing areas like Peoria/Rockford/Quad Cities/some STL suburbs/etc. and also looks to get a "surprising" number of votes out of "WWC" areas of Cook County.
- Several other candidates doing a combination of these.

Any candidate that could have some crossover appeal between those would win.  Whether that's a "business wing" Republican who can also appeal to "true conservative" types due to a stance or two (ala Romney 2012) or a "Trumpist" candidate that captures the frustrations of the moment to also appeal to other Republican groups across many demographics (ala Trump 2016) or a more generic Tea Partyer type who can channel anger at "The Establishment" to combine all of the other groups together like [take your pick of random, crazy 2010-2014 Republican], I do not know.

Who do you think would have won the 2008 Republican presidential primary in Illinois if that state had been the first to hold a primary?