What Went Down In The Arizona, Florida And Illinois Primaries

We now have partial returns in from seven Illinois counties, representing a mix of the Chicago suburbs and Downstate, and Biden is leading by more than 20 points everywhere, along with a 38-point advantage statewide. We don’t have anything in from Chicago or Cook County yet, which might actually be comparatively better for Sanders. But this isn’t looking very close.

Sarah, I’ll be watching Cook County, home to Chicago of course. It’s the biggest source of Democratic votes (and votes in general in Illinois), contributing 57 percent of the 2016 Democratic primary total. Boring answer, but if turnout is notably down there, it’ll be notably down overall.

Sanders actually won a number of counties in Illinois in 2016, despite losing the state, though most were by a narrow margin. His biggest victories were in McLean County and Champaign County, which the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is (read: lots of college students). We already know Sanders does better with younger voters, so I’ll be interested to see if these are his best counties again this time around.