Conventional Wisdom Says Mitt Romney Will Win Illinois by at Least 5 points

Convetional Wisdom Is Right in This Case – It Cannot Always be Wrong

[Consumer Alert:  As Gregg Easterbrook says, all predictions wrong or your money back.]

With a number of primary results in it is now possible to understand what is going on with the Republican electorate and how they are voting.  Of the three candidates who are actually getting votes (sorry Ron Paul, your votes are just people pulling that lever for the fun of it.) here is the groups that they appeal to.

Mitt Romney:  Mr. Romney is getting support from those making over $100,000 a year, no surprise there. He is also getting the majority of Catholic voters (surprise there) and his base is in the urban and suburdan areas.  In Michigan Mr. Romney did very well in Wayne county and surrounding counties which is Detroit; in Ohio he did very well even in conservative Hamilton county, which is Cincinnati and in the Columbus and Cleveland areas.

Rick Santorum:  Mr. Santorum’s support is from rural voters and evangelical Protestants.  Period.  That’s about the end of it.  He does attract support from lower income groups but they have not been dominant in Republican votng.

Newt Gingrich:  Mr. Gingrich attracks support from Mr. Santorum’s base when the voting is in the deep South.  Otherwise Mr. Gingrich attracks only voters who do not want to vote for Mr. Romney or Mr. Santorum, and outside the South this is a pretty small group.  No one seems to vote for Mr. Gingrich beause he is Mr. Gingrich.

A second factor in the Illinois race will be the money advantage that Mr. Romney has.  He will again outspend Mr. Santorum in the area of millions vs hundreds of thousands, and that will be very effective in the concentrated Chicago market. 

So based on this analysis conventional wisdom is that it is now fairly certain that Mitt Romney will win Illionois by at least five percentage points.  The large urban area in and around Chicago will turn out for him, and this will more than offset the support from Mr. Santorum from downstate.  The very southern part of Illinois is closer to Mississippi than it is to any other cultural bases, so Mr. Gingrich will do well enough in that area to deny Mr. Santorum a chance of overtaking Mr. Romney’s Chicago based lead.

So there you have it.  In Illinois the results will be

Romney 42%

Santorum 36%

Gingrich 12%

Paul 6%

OMG- 4%

With Mr. Gingrich out of it (ok we all know he is out of it, but by this we mean the election) Mr. Santorum gets a small win.  But since Mr. Gingrich wants more than anything else to keep Mr. Romney from winning, he plans to stay in the race and thus insure that Mr. Romney will win.  As we said, he is out of it.

All of the current punditry is lameting Mr. Romney’s campaign and his chances.  This has a shelf life up to the Illinois results, at which time the professional pundits, you know, the ones that are almost always wrong, will once again climb on the Romney inevitability bandwagon.  Of course that trip will last only until the next Santorum win, at which time everything will be back to where it is now.

Ok Illinois, now that you know the results why not save the cost of an election and just go with the above.