Posted from US News and World Reports
Chicago’s four other collar counties, the nickname given to the five counties that surround the centrally located Cook County in the Chicago metropolitan area, have followed similar evolutions. In 2000, none of the five collar counties gave the Democratic presidential nominee a majority. By 2020, four of the five – all but McHenry County – backed the Democratic presidential candidate, with vote shares between 53% and 61%.
The collar counties have also moved towards the Democrats in gubernatorial races. Between 2014 – the last time a Republican won the governorship – and 2022, Democrats improved their gubernatorial-race performance in the five collar counties by between 10 and 20 percentage points.
The blue shift in Chicago’s suburbs isn’t just important in its own right; it has carried the rest of the state with it, shifting Illinois from a state where Republicans were competitive to one where, increasingly, they aren’t. (Political handicappers, including U.S. News, rate Illinois as a Safe Democratic state in the presidential race.)
Photo Credit: Louis Jacobson for U.S. News
