Our turnout was very very high. There is also East St Louis to contend with in downstate IL, however. Their turnout usually isn’t good unless the Dems are giving out free chicken dinner tickets [I’m serious, that’s what they used to do... now it’s probably cigarettes] but I bet turnout in the last two national elections was high since it was for the first halfblack president. And I guarantee the Dems transported blacks from Chicago downstate to vote a second time using addresses of abandoned or burnt out apartment buildings to register them.
The reason I say that is the blacks my mom worked with up there in the St Louis area often went to get state aid and freebies by traveling up to Wisconsin, then to Missouri, then to states downriver such as Louisiana and Mississippi like it was some kind of handout family reunion world tour. They’d brag about it. The only lady that didn’t go on the annual journey was her black Republican friend who was embarassed by it all. Her friend was so conservative she made her own dresses rather than “waste money” by shopping and she was very good at it.
That said, there really are a lot of patriotic religious conservative blacks in the area but the Republican party simply doesn’t bother to reach out to them or give them a hand because there are so few volunteers to begin with. What there are... are little old white ladies who are scared of the crime rate- caused by Democrats who like it that way- and they aren’t going to go walk any precincts and talk to anyone. Even the foreign black students at local colleges are afraid to drive through the area because of the reputation. The problem with the GOP in Illinois is that it depends almost entirely upon little old white ladies. The men are AWOL.