I thought this was a safe seat.
I don’t think is just for one seat. I think its for all those states/communities along the Mississippi. Trump did well there, got alot of old time dems to flip all along the river. The dems noticed, its why they have spent alot of time in places like IA, lying to their voters again.
I thought this was a safe seat.
Well, by your own numbers, a mere 4% shift would make the election a tossup, and, the Dem (Kelly) seems to be a much stronger candidate than Bost has had to face recently. Kelly is attacking Bost for "not doing enough for the district."
Truth is, once you get South of the St. Louis area, SW IL has been an economic backwater ever since high sulfur coal became unpopular, and the modest oil production in the area fizzled out. Once you are @ IL Hwy. 13 and south, Government in its various identities (especially Southern Illinois University) is the big $$ source. There is some farming and some outdoor recreation, but Gov't is a big factor in those, too. IL's business climate really stinks, so, whatcha' gonna do? (to quote Black Sabbath.) "Robin Hood" other citizens further?
Jackson County (Carbondale & Murphysboro), Bost's home, is further under duress because of S. IL University's $$ & enrollment woes (in turn due to the State budget problems, and a top heavy administration largely bereft of creativity and competence.)
I believe this state map is more or less comparable to Federal $$: https://capitolfax.com/2017/08/14/whos-bailing-out-whom-these-county-numbers-might-surprise-you/
Granted that some further recreational development could be done -- IL DNR in particular really sucks when it comes to their end of promoting S. IL's natural areas, but even that potential growth is limited: Most of those resources, especially those in the Shawnee Nat'l Forest, are limited traffic, smallish areas. The best known, "Garden of the Gods", would be overwhelmed & wrecked if you got thousands more people a day in there. Ditto for Crab Orchard Refuge. Pounds Hollow and Lake Glendale are already petty busy (and small). Maybe Rend Lake's and Kincaid Lake's Federal areas could handle a little more traffic, but I doubt it'd be enough to really make a difference. The Federal portion of Cedar Lake could be further developed, but it's the water supply for Carbondale -- C'Dale would probably fight tooth and nail to keep that watershed pristine (and they can hardly be blamed!) The two "big" underutilized opportunities I can think of are State run: The "World Shooting Complex" (deserted most of the time) and the nearly 20,000 acre Pyramid State Park (also nearly deserted most of the time). But, again, those suffer from lack of creativity by IL DNR in getting steady substantial "usage", more than anything else. And S. IL just does not have big draws like Yosemite, Smoky Mtn. Nat'l Park, or even LBL or the big lakes in the Ozarks. MY family likes S. IL as a destination due to proximity, and it having many "kinda neat" little out of the way spots away from hordes of people / heavy usage. Bring in lots more traffic and that attraction will be lost.
What S. IL needs MOST is an about face in IL's business climate. But Rauner (current governor) tried to push that and got almost nowhere. To the best of my knowledge, Bost likely supports the right approaches, but as a campaigner needs to "push" a long, long list of his work history in that area.
Then you have Cairo, and a long litany of corrupt local officials throughout the region. Add in the unpopularity of present GOP Governor Rauner.
Tally it all up, and you have a population of which a big chunk is dependent or partially dependent on the already generous gov't dollars, and is almost all cognizant of the listless area economy, but most of whom think upstate is robbing them. IMO, not 1 in 5 truly understand what needs to be done, and it'd probably take Divine Intervention to get 2 in 5 to support it if it were coherently explained to them.