By Illinois Review
A handful of irrelevant Illinois Republicans surfaced this week to repeat their favorite talking point: Donald Trump is supposedly “unpopular” in Illinois and holding the GOP back. But the numbers tell a completely different story – and their comments only highlight how disconnected they are from the voters they pretend to understand.
Former IL GOP chairman Pat Brady led the charge in today’s Illinois Playbook, declaring that “Republicans are going to have a really bad cycle if they don’t change course,” and insisting that longtime Republicans “don’t see themselves carrying the Trump flag like they used to.” He claimed Trump’s “politics just don’t work here” and that the GOP is “in limbo.”
But nothing in the numbers supports Brady’s claim. And Brady’s commentary leaves out one critical fact about his own record.
In 2012, Brady was pushed out as chairman of the Illinois GOP after breaking with the party and publicly backing gay marriage. Then in 2021, the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois hired Brady to lobby Republican legislators to support a gay marriage bill – a move that permanently severed his credibility with the grassroots. These are the same voters now fueling Trump’s gains across Illinois. The idea that Brady speaks for them is pure fantasy.
Trump increased his raw Illinois vote total in 2024 – even with lower turnout – while Democrats collapsed. Kamala Harris received more than 400,000 fewer votes than Joe Biden. Trump’s vote share rose to 43.5 percent, marking his strongest performance in Illinois since George H.W. Bush won the state in 1988. The Democratic margin shrank from 17 points to just under 11.
That is not limbo. That is movement.
Playbook also featured former state senator Matt Murphy warning about “sweeping conclusions,” yet ironically questioning whether suburban Trump voters will turn out “with Trump not on the ballot.”
But those same suburban voters did show up in 2024 – and they delivered real gains. Trump improved across the collar counties and flipped precincts that hadn’t voted Republican in decades.
Democrat political operative Thom Serafin told Politico that Illinois voters “turned against Trump years ago.” The data again says otherwise. Trump increased his vote share in Chicago from 15.8 percent to 21.9 percent, flipped the 41st Ward with 54 percent, nearly won the 30th Ward, and gained sharply in Latino-heavy neighborhoods. Working-class, Hispanic, and Orthodox Jewish voters all broke toward Trump.
Playbook then quoted several Republicans claiming voters only care about affordability and not “culture war noise.” But the issues they dismiss as “noise” – crime, migrant spending, collapsing schools – are exactly the issues driving Democratic defections in Illinois. These aren’t abstractions. They’re lived realities for families watching Chicago spend over $2.5 billion on migrants while basic services erode.
And here’s the blunt truth the Politico-quoted Republicans refuse to acknowledge: the Illinois GOP was losing spectacularly long before Donald Trump ever entered politics.
Republicans lost the governor’s mansion in 2002, 2010, 2014, 2018, and 2022. They lost the state House majority in 1996 and haven’t seen it since. They have lost every statewide office except one since 2006 – all before Trump even announced his first run.
For two decades, the Illinois GOP establishment has presided over shrinking maps, collapsing turnout, vanishing relevance, and a refusal to engage real voters on real issues.
So when these same figures now blame Trump for the party’s failures, Illinois voters see it for what it is: projection.
Trump is gaining voters in Illinois. The Illinois GOP establishment is losing them.
And the data couldn’t be clearer about which direction the state is moving — and who’s actually leading the movement.
