Presidential –

• (1144 delegates to win) Romney 563 (56%), Santorum 263 (26%), Gingrich 135, Ron Paul 50, Huntsman 2 (Source: WSJ)
• President Obama Job Approval 47-48% (14 day rolling average)

Presidential Contest 3/21 (Romney = blue, Santorum = pink, Gingrich = red, upcoming = tan)

Illinois Primary

Now that the Presidential race has essentially become a two man race between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, it is becoming obvious that each candidate has a reliable voting base: Romney is the candidate of moderate/liberal Republicans (particularly in the urban cores) who are more inclined towards economic issues. These Republicans tend to dominate Republican electorates along the Pacific/Atlantic coasts, as well as in the industrial Midwest. Rick Santorum’s strength is with social issue conservatives, as well as voters in smaller towns/rural areas in the vast interior of the country. Originally, the Deep South was solidly in Newt Gingrich’s corner, but Santorum’s twin victories last week in Mississippi and Alabama have made the Deep South “Santorum Country” now.

Last night’s contest was in Illinois, and Illinois is one of several states (like New York) where conservative Republicans have never had much strength, even in the primaries. This is largely due to Illinois’ having an urban dominated electorate: the vast majority of the vote is cast in “Chicagoland” (Chicago and adjacent suburbs). When economic issues were front and center, this area was competitive for Republicans, and in fact Republicans carried Illinois in every Presidential election between 1968 and 1988. Since then, social issues have been more predominant, and Illinois (thanks to large Democratic margins in Chicagoland) has become solidly Democratic in every Presidential election since 1988.

This is context under which Illinois’ Republicans voted. Statewide, Romney defeated Santorum 47-35% by amassing a 55-29% lead in Chicagoland, where 53% of the vote was cast. However, it didn’t hurt that Romney essentially split the Downstate vote with Santorum (Santorum could only eke out a narrow 43-39% win outside of Chicagoland). Curiously, the southern part of the state (roughly everything south of the state capitol of Springfield) is similar in attitude to the Deep South, and accordingly, Santorum’s strongest percentages were in this area.

Voter Turnout

We have noted that a state’s voter turnout (compared to 2008) in Presidential  contests has become fairly predictable: there is strong correlation between the perceived level of competition in each state and the strength of Republican turnout relative to 2008. In this case, the Illinois vote was 1% higher than it was in 2008, as both of the major candidates heavily contested the state.

Louisiana primary

This Saturday (March 24), Louisiana has its primary, and given the demographic terrain (Deep South, substantial rural population, and an active religious conservative voter bloc that is firmly behind Santorum), we expect Santorum to win fairly easily, although it will be interesting to see what kind of residual strength Newt Gingrich has – we have noticed that in Deep South primary contests: the “anti Romney” vote (in other words, the combination of the Santorum and the Gingrich vote) in those states was 60-65%, while Romney has consistently been getting 25-30% of the GOP primary vote.

The signs seem to point to a Santorum victory here: Louisiana has concluded its in person early voting (mail in absentees can still be accepted up until Friday), and as of last night, 20,337 Republicans have already cast their ballots. Thus far, the early voting has been strongest in parishes that favored Mike Huckabee in 2008 (he carried the state 43-42% over John McCain in 2008), and it’s reasonable to assume that the Huckabee vote is transferable to Santorum.

What does this early voting volume mean in terms of expected turnout ? While the early voting/absentee turnout is more than double the 9,214 who voted early in the 2008 Presidential primary, we do not believe that the eventual voter turnout will be twice the 2008 figure of 161K. In person early voting is a relatively recent policy, and it is gradually becoming more popular as time goes on (16% of those voting in the 2011 statewide elections voted early, as opposed to 6% in the 2008 primary). We think that voter turnout will be more like 180K, which suggests that about 13% of the final vote will have been cast early.

Looking ahead and the “delegate race”

While Romney’s Illinois primary win puts him in the driver’s seat, it is important to note that “game changers” can occur. From a surface glance, the 7 primary contests in April that follow the Louisiana contest favor Romney, since 6 of the 7 contests held will be in the Northeast/New England (the remaining contest will be in Wisconsin). While we assume that Romney would win at least 5 of those contests, it’s easy to forget now that Santorum emerged as the “anti Romney” by carrying Minnesota, Colorado, and Missouri on the same night, when the presumption at the time was that those states were in Romney’s corner.

What about the delegate math? So far, Romney has a 56-26% lead over Santorum in the delegate count (as compiled by the Wall Street Journal) with 44% of the delegates chosen. For Romney to reach the magic number of 1,144, he needs to get 46% of the remaining delegates. Santorum has to get 69% of the remaining delegates to reach 1,144 by himself, although if his/Gingrich’s delegates were combined, that number would fall to 59% of remaining delegates.

Congressional/Statewide –

• Generic Congressional vote: 44-42 Republican/Democrat (14 day rolling average)

Illinois became the fourth state to hold its Congressional primaries last night. There were no real surprises, although 20 year Republican incumbent Don Manzullo lost in the Republican primary against freshman Republican Adam Kinzinger – their districts were combined during redistricting. Two defeated Democratic incumbents tried to regain their old seats, and one of those two (Bill Foster) was successful, at least among Democratic primary voters.

The Congressional primary calendar has been relatively quiet so far, and this lack of activity will continue into April: only two states (Maryland and Pennsylvania) hold primaries next month.

On the Congressional qualifying front, this has been a very busy month. Maine, Utah, Nevada, Iowa, and New Mexico concluded their candidate qualifying. There were no real surprises there, although we now know from more complete information from California and Texas that a significant number of districts escaped partisan composition. In Texas, four Republican and one Democratic district escaped partisan competition: in California, (despite an independent commission’s drawing the district lines), 10 Democratic and two Republican districts are guaranteed to stay in their respective partisan columns. This means that 26 districts (14 Democratic and 12 Republican) are “safe” for the respective party. The Congressional playing field will become clearer by the end of this month, when a total of 26 states will see their candidate qualifying finish – Missouri, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Virginia will see their Congressional filing conclude next week.

There were some recent additional Congressional retirements in New York and Washington State, which brings the retirement count to 44 House members (26 Democrats and 18 Republicans) and 10 Senators (7 Democrats and 3 Republicans).