Illinois Is The Only Midwest State That Would Not Elect Trump If Only Men Voted
By Stephen Gossett in News on Oct 12, 2016 4:22PM
Hillary Clinton has a very strong chance of being elected president in November—roughly 86 percent, to give the number. If she does, it will be thanks in yooj part to women, according to poll-analysis wizard Nate Silver, who located a mammoth gender gap in the polls on Tuesday.
But of all the dudes apparently dropping the ball for the Dems, they’re not representative of Lincoln Land: Illinois is the only state in the Midwest that would still cast its electoral votes for Hillary Clinton if only men were to vote.
The national disparity is pretty jaw-dropping. In a male-only bloc, FiveThirtyEight projects that Trump would win in a landslide, 350 electoral votes to 188. Just as alarming is the map itself, which shows a lonely Illinois as the only state anywhere near the region to stay blue. Aside from us and New Mexico, the whole of flyover country, from the far Northeast to the far West Coast is a giant splotch of red.
FiveThirtyEight
A women-only vote, on the other hand, would be an even starker landslide: Clinton 458, Trump 80.
FiveThirtyEight
“It seems fair to say that, if Trump loses the election, it will be because women voted against him,” Silver writes. It’s not that surprising, given pussygate, personal-space violation, Alicia Machado, etc., etc. etc. But Trump’s still-high standing with men is sadly instructive. It’s good to know that, at least in Illinois if nowhere else remotely nearby, that gender gap is surmountable.
That said, we probably shouldn’t throw our biceps out patting ourselves on the back as paragons of feminism. A quick look at your Twitter feed as it relates to Aroldis Chapman and Derrick Rose alone would show as much. And lest we confuse the entire state for a Democratic stranglehold, a quick look at the 2012 President and House electoral-result maps from Politico shows Cook County joining only the far northwest and far southeast portions of the state as blue outliers, in terms of geography.
Side note: The FiveThirtyEight Elections Podcast recorded live in Chicago this weekend, immediately following the revelation of the Access Hollywood tapes. It’s worth a listen and can be heard here.