What #IL18 actually looks like (for the primary)

Where Mike Flynn and Darin LaHood should do their best, and where the game will be fought.

I took some time to warp this Romney+25 Congressional District for the Decision Desk, which will be providing live returns on 7/7. LaHood, as already discussed, is a State Senator hailing from Peoria County, and his district overlaps this in the areas shaded in light red:

Counties have been re-sized to show the number of expected Republican voters. One thing I've advocated, like in my treachery at The Federalist and National Review, is the importance of registering new voters and turning them out. The Party does a pretty poor job of it, so this could be an opportunity for conservative insurgents: they can sign up, log, and turn out these disillusioned voters especially in off-year specials like what we have coming up.

I don't know if Flynn's team has invested at all in this, but if they are utilizing a mobilization system similar to Brat's in 2014, he has an excellent chance of maximizing votes out of his home county, McLean, and Sangamon, where the bulk of the "not-in-LaHood's district" voters live. If he can get clear majorities in all three counties, he's in like...well you know.

Anyways, just thought I'd stop by.

A more thorough explainer on how this diagram was created:
I took the primary numbers from 2012 and 2014 on the Republican side, averaged each county's totals, then assigned 1 block for every 1% a county made up of the CD-wide vote. If a county was really really small, it still got a single block, so there was some rounding to include all participating counties. There are a total of 100 blocks in the diagram.

posted by CAC at 09:34 PM

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