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There has been plenty of punditry across Illinois waxing poetic about why Illinois Republicans were drubbed at the polls last month.

Suburban Republican consultant Collin Corbett didn’t want to follow the prevailing wisdom (or lack thereof) of the pundit class, so he began a deep dive into why Democrats made so many gains in Illinois in what was expected to be a national wave year.

“There are all those people out there who were ready to point fingers at conservatives or moderates or Trump or abortion or this or that and they’ve been singing that tune for six or 12 months,” said Corbett. “So they were going to point those fingers after the election no matter the outcome because its confirmation bias.”

(Disclosure: Corbett and I have worked a couple of campaigns together, a firm he’s associated with does our polling, and we’re friends, even though he’s a White Sox fan.)

Corbett polled 1,001 voters from November 15-18 using automated calls, live calls, text, and web.

48% of respondents consider themselves Democrats, 32% are Republicans, and 21% identify as independents.

What may be more fascinating was the ideology of those voters.

39% considered themselves moderate, 35% conservative, and 26% called themselves liberal.

In a deep blue state? Huh?

Corbett said they were so surprised by the moderate identification that he put another poll in the field to ask the question again (and received a similar response.)

“We were shocked by the number of people who self-identified as moderates,” he said. “That’s indicative of a number of things, I’m sure, but I think the clear takeaway was that if you self describe as a moderate, that’s also what you’re looking for in your politics.

Clearly, Corbett said, moderate voters are casting their votes for Democrats.

“This is not the far left state that I think some Republicans are throwing up their hands and saying ‘that’s it, we’re done, it’s over.’” he said. “This is still a working class state, this is still a midwestern state. Sure, it leans more left than other midwestern states, but these are working class voters who don’t ascribe to the liberal policies of even some of the politicians they elect.”

The top two issues to voters who responded to Corbett’s poll were threats do democracy and abortion.

He said Democrats used both issues to their advantage.

“Democrats started on an emotional issue to get attention, which you have to do. That, for them, was abortion and they used that translate into a Republican extremism [message], which plays for everybody,” Corbett said. “They used January 6, they used Trump, they’re all proof of the larger point that is Republicans are extremists and ‘don’t vote for them, they’re bad.’ This isn’t left vs. right, this is moderate vs. far left and far right.”

More than anything, though, he says Republicans didn’t give voters real insight into what they believe in and were defined by Democrats as “extreme.”

“Voters want people who can govern. They want people who can get things done,” he said. “So when you paint the other side as crazy extremists who yell and scream, who are anti-democracy, then average voters don’t care about their stance on crime or the economy or anything else. You just don’t want them anywhere near your government.”

Republicans up and down the ballot, starting with gubernatorial candidate Sen. Darren Bailey and the PAC supporting him, tried to make crime the entire focal point of the campaign.

Corbett’s poll showed just 12% of voters named crime as their top issue in November.

“Crime itself was a good starting point,” he said. “For those who say crime didn’t work, they’re wrong. They’re absolutely wrong. It did work. It was a strong issue, but it wasn’t the [most important] issue. Where we failed was not using that issue to get attention then translating it to something else.”

Corbett cited Republicans never capitalized on an economic message.

“We made our entire election about crime, which it shouldn’t have been,” he said. “You look at some of those commercials [Dan Proft’s PAC] ran, it got attention. But once [he] had their attention, they didn’t do anything with it. Republicans wasted that opportunity.”

He says Republicans should have pivoted to economic message or using “extremist” language against Democrats, especially surrounding repealing the Parental Notification of Abortion law.

Even after the drubbing Republicans across the state took last month, Corbett says he’s optimistic about how the party can rebound moving forward.

“I’m way more optimistic now than I was,” Corbett said. “After the election, I thought we were wasting our time. But looking at the makeup of the voters of state, how open they are to a different message, looking at how they view Democrats and Republicans where they’re just kind of sick of both parties, there are a lot of positive signs we see in this poll.”

He says Republicans need to work to recruit and nominate better candidates that better represent their districts, and who can adequately message their positions, especially on tough issues like abortion.

To read Corbett’s analysis of his poll, click here.

Patrick Pfingsten

@pfingstenshow

patrick@theillinoize.com