Illinois is a blue leaning state but it also has a lot of conservatives-moderate voters, Cook alone has 500,000 to 600,000 that vote pretty reliable Republican, and Whitney is already to be competing with one other candidate for that side of the political spectrum, Gov. Quinn support with in the Democrat has historically come from the more progressive wing.

Yes in the end most of the GOP base will fall behind Brady for a couple of reasons, the first is that most of the leadership sees this as there best chance to retake both the Governorship and a US Senate seat in years so there will be great pressure for unity. Another reason is that there were two other candidate that ran with almost identical message to Senator Brady’s and there combined vote total was around 43-45% and to that you can add in that the candidate that finished campaigned on similar economic issues.

With the strength of the machines in Cook and the Metro East( St. Clair county, ect,) it is extremely unlikely that any Democrat Party Nominee will get less that 30%, so if you do the numbers I think that the only conclusion that you can come to is that Whitney would have to pull off a fair number of conservative-moderate voters in order to win.

You mean the guy who got 20%? Have you seen any polls that back up your statement?

“Whitney might have a chance of doing something in this election but to win he is going to have to find away to attract a lot of conservative-moderate voters”

I think he can win by mobilizing progressives and independents who are sick of both Repubs and Dems. Luckily, he’s in Illinois, so there should be plenty of those. I don’t think he has to change his message at all; the trick is to articulate his strategy for winning to enough people so he can steadily climb in the polls and build momentum through election day.

Considering the problems that the Democrats are likely to have in the general election, I would say that Whitney might have a chance of doing something in this election but to win he is going to have to find away to attract a lot of conservative-moderate voters. If he can not find a way to do this the best that I think he can do is make a statement and deny Pat Quinn election, which the Dems might well lose one way or the other.