You recall incorrectly. I live in Illinois and Rick Santorum was ON THE BALLOT in EVERY single congressional district and county in Illinois (I don't think we've ever had an election in Illinois where a statewide candidate for federal office is "not on the ballot" in SOME districts, Illinois state election law doesn't work that). The lie was started by kooky Paulbots ("only Ron Paul is on the ballot in enough states to stop Romney!") and it's amazing conservatives still fall for it.
He was missing a handful of delegates in 4 districts. In 3 of those districts: 4,5, & 7, they were liberal urban districts in Chicago that he stood little chance of winning. All 3 are safe Democrat in November and went to Romney easily for the few people that voted in the GOP primary. In the last, IL-13, it was a moderate GOP in the 'burbs he had a slight chance of winning and might be deprived of 3 or 4 delegates that he earned if that happened. However, Romney won IL-13 today.
Good show. I came looking for details on delegate count, but those two posts will have to do. And that sounds like the crap some Paulbots would pull, based on what I’ve seen them doing.
As far as I can tell from the official state congressional district map, Wheaton is in Congressional District 6. If BillyBoy is right, Santorum **DID** qualify for delegates there.
What BillyBoy says appears to be confirmed by the Los Angeles Times article on the election, here: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-illinois-delegates-guide-20120320,0,2470940.story
I have in front of me the real-time update map broken down by counties from Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/20/illinois-primary-2012-results-map_n_1368335.html
The map indicates 99 percent of the vote is now in, with one county, Macoupin, still missing. It indicates Romney won DuPage County (home of Wheaton College, and historically a center of evangelical influence) by 54 to 28 percent for Santorum. I am not an expert on Illinois politics, but it looks like Romney took not only the urban but also the suburban areas of the state and Santorum’s support was confined largely to the rural areas of Illinois.
I can't quickly find a breakdown of Santorum-Gingrich votes by Congressional district, but here's an interactive map of congressional districts: http://gis.elections.il.gov/map_viewer/default.aspx
When compared with the Huffington Post county reports, if Santorum didn't file a delegate slate in CD-13, that means he missed out on a swath of territory from north of St. Louis running through central Illinois south of Springfield up past Decatur and extending to Bloomington and the Champaign-Urbana area. CD-4 (which is horribly gerrymandered), CD-5, and CD-7 appear to be a mix of urban and close-in suburban districts. This is unfortunate; I've spent a lot of time in those areas of the state when I worked for a different newspaper and some of those areas have a high population of white-flight people whose parents carried with them Chicago's race-based politics and have become Republican voters, though often for reasons I very much dislike. I would have thought Santorum would be able to get delegates in those areas relatively easily and I don't understand why that didn't happen unless he simply didn't get the boots-on-the-ground organizational help he needed.
165 posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2012 11:20:36 PM by Thunder90: “Santorum did not qualify for the ballot in Wheaton and in some areas of Southern IL.”
186 posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2012 2:18:35 AM by BillyBoy: “I live in Illinois and Rick Santorum was ON THE BALLOT in EVERY single congressional district and county in Illinois... The lie was started by kooky Paulbots (”only Ron Paul is on the ballot in enough states to stop Romney!”) and it's amazing conservatives still fall for it. He was missing a handful of delegates in 4 districts. In 3 of those districts: 4,5, & 7, they were liberal urban districts in Chicago that he stood little chance of winning. All 3 are safe Democrat in November and went to Romney easily for the few people that voted in the GOP primary. In the last, IL-13, it was a moderate GOP in the ‘burbs he had a slight chance of winning and might be deprived of 3 or 4 delegates that he earned if that happened. However, Romney won IL-13 today.”