November 20, 2024
HARRIS UNDERPERFORMS BIDEN IN CHICAGO BY 172,311 VOTES
Chicago has turned red by 15,520 votes.
That’s meaningless if not ludicrous in a city of 2,746,388.
Donald Trump got a dismal 15.5 percent in 2020 but upped that to 20.6 percent in 2024. What is meaningful is that the city’s Democratic presidential vote dropped by 175,311 from Biden-Harris to Harris-Walz – 944,735 to 769,424. Chicago is turning opaque.
Chicago’s turnout plunged by 160,653, with 62 percent of the 1,498,873 registered voters casting a ballot. In an election where “democracy” was under threat, Trump was deemed Hitler, tyranny was imminent and Trump voters were “garbage,” it must be a relief to Chicagoans that only 202,954 of their brethren live in a dumpster.
It is a concern, however, to the Democratic establishment that the Harris-Walz vote was just 28 percent of the city’s population and just 51.3 percent of the registered voters. And also that the Republican vote (20.5 percent) combined with the ex-Biden, anti-Harris non-voters, who are implacably anti-Trump, was more than 40 percent on Nov. 5. The Never-Harris types are miserable with the quality of their lives and the trajectory of this city.
It’s called the misery index. Is the personal quality of your life improving? The economic? Your neighborhood, your safety, or your kids’ schools? Clearly after 4 years of Biden-Harris nationally and almost 6 years of Lightfoot/Johnson locally, voters are dissatisfied and want and demand better. Almost 75 percent in polling think the country is on the wrong track.
A good analogy would be if some Chicagoans had an option to bring back Rich Daley or Rahm Emanuel: They would likely leap at the chance.
It’s the same way with Trump: He undeniably knew what he was doing, voters knew what he was going to do or not do, and that put Americans in a comfort zone. Not so with Biden-Harris. And Harris-Walz ran a vapid/vacuous/timid/evasive/programmed campaign. Every time Harris opened her mouth her handlers would cringe. “Joy and change” descended into fear and demonization. Voters – or at least a small, critical segment of them -- wanted to know what each would do for them, how they would fix things. Harris-Walz could not tell them, and that was intentional because it would be more of the same.
The popular vote at last count was 76,537,938-73,922,071 or 50-48.3 percent. Trump carried 31 states and Harris only 19 plus D.C. In 2020 the vote was 81,268,867-74,216,747, which means Trump’s 2020 base turned out while the Biden/anti-Trump base withered by a stunning 7.4 million. That was evident in both Chicago and the Cook County suburbs, where Harris won 644,190-373,096 (62.5 percent) in a 1,053,347 turnout compared to Biden’s 781,238-377,036 win with 66.9 percent in a 1,188,017 turnout. What happened is that 137,000 of the former Biden base just refused to vote.
That was evident (see chart) on Chicago’s Northwest Side. Turnout was down between 2,000 to 5,000 in every ward except the Latino-majority 36th. The Trump/Republican base grew significantly in the culturally conservative 41st and 38th wards, with Trump actually winning a 51.3 percent majority in the 41st, up 5 points. It was also up 5 points in the 38th. The West Rogers Park 50th, with a large concentration of pro-Israel Orthodox Jews, saw the Trump vote grow by 13 points.
The 45th Ward gave Harris 64.4 percent, down from 67.9 percent; the 39th gave Harris 66.9 percent, close to 2020’s 69.7. But the other area wards – 32, 33, 40 and 47 – went Harris-Walz by over 80 percent, as did every Lakefront ward except the Gold Coast 42nd. Far Lefties as well as more conventional liberals have a serious guilt complex. They have their own set of rules and everyone is THOU SHALT NOT VOTE FOR TRUMP. To do so is a mortal sin.
The media blames cultural resentment, meaning that Trumpsters voted on the basis of identity, not failed policy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Harris was an inauthentic, calculating, opportunistic, teleprompter-bound phony who blew through an inconceivable amount of cash, lost and has left the party in shambles.
CHICAGO SCHOOL BOARD (CSB): BAD GRADE FOR CTU. The Chicago Teachers Union, which is the puppet-master that pulls Mayor Brandon Johnson’s strings had a bad day on Nov. 5. The CTU, using teachers’ union dues, spent $1.7 million to elect 10 pro-public school flunkies to the new CSB. The pro-school choicers (charter schools) fielded 9 candidates and spent around $700,000.
The scorecard: The CTU won 4 races, independent or pro-charter won 6. Johnson will still appoint 11 more pro-CTU candidates, which will still leave the board in his pocket.
POLLSTERS GOT IT WRONG – AGAIN: The final RCP polling average of dozens of polls had Harris winning by 0.1 percent, roughly a 49/49 tie. Trump won by 1.7 percent. The latest unofficial popular vote (see above) has Trump winning by a margin of 2,615,867 So the pollsters were off by 1.8 percent, which meant they under-sampled the Trump vote – but not by that much.
They did about the same as in 2020 when they had Biden up 7.2 and he won by 4.4 points and in 2016 when they had Clinton up 3.7 and she won the popular vote by 2.6 points. In sum, Trump won because Harris under-performed, running 2.7 points and 7.4 million votes behind Biden.
REQUIEM FOR DOOR- KNOCKERS: Spare those knuckles forevermore. Remember at the advent of Biden’s re-election the national Democrats boasted that they would have a superior ground game? They were going to hire 5,000 field operatives nationwide, open a thousand offices, and recruit volunteers (or paid workers) to “canvass,” for PRO-Biden (or anti-Trump) voters and then get-out-the-vote.
One Northwest Side Democrat, Jacob Kaplan, the county party executive director, said that he was helping to organize weekly trips of Harris-Walz volunteers who on Saturdays and Sundays would pile into cars and drive to southwestern Michigan or southeast Wisconsin. Trump won both WI and MI. A stranger knocking on somebody’s door does not mean THAT “somebody” will vote as the stranger suggests. This year there was no shortage of motivation – especially where Trump is concerned.
Democrats boasted of knocking on 5,000 doors/hour. What a waste of time. Trump relied on podcasts, kooky media events like McDonald’s and the garbage truck, and his larger-than-life stature. His message resonated: If you want to fix this mess you have to vote for me. And voters did.
MY VICTORY LAP: This columnist got it ABSOLUTELY, AMAZINGLY right on my 2024 predictions. So I’m taking a victory lap. I have been writing this column for more than 52 years, since 1973, which meant analyzing and predicting 13 presidential cycles, 14 off-year cycles and 13 Chicago mayor/aldermanic cycles. I have made a plethora of predictions on federal, state, county and local outcomes, probably slightly less than half correct. Hey come on, some people also thought Mike Tyson would knock out Jake Paul.
But practice makes perfect. In my Oct. 30 pre-election column I called it for Trump, for a Trump sweep of all 7 battleground (GA, NC, PA, MI, WI, NV and AZ) and a blowout electoral vote (EV) of 312-226. And that’s exactly what occurred. I also predicted a Republican U.S. Senate flip to at least 54R-46D with pickups in WV, MT, OH and PA (correct) and maybe MI, WI, NV, AZ (wrong but really close defeats). It could have gone to 58R-42D. But it’s 53R-47D.
I will endeavor to perpetuate my oracle status into the future, but to my critics I remain a humble man.
Read more Analysis & Opinion from Russ Stewart at Russstewart.com
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