Illinois

On a color coded map, the areas that tend to vote Democratic look like blue islands floating in a sea of red. However, there are a few more blue areas than you might think.

The map below, from the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at SIU , shows which counties in Illinois went predominately for Biden and which for TSF in 2020. Besides the Chicago area and Champaign County, there are 6 or 7 other other blue counties (depending on whether you count Winnebago County as part of the Chicago area).

The blue counties are all either relatively densely populated, the home of a large university, or both. The red counties, otoh, are mostly (not all) rural and sparsely populated. As many red counties as there are, their combined population is less that that of the blue counties.

In other words, there are actually a lot of Democratic voters in this state. They're just concentrated in certain areas, while Republicans are more widely but also much more thinly scattered. And the Republicans in those areas are not pleased about Democrats having so much control over what happens in this state.