Donald Trump won Illinois on Tuesday night, boosting the Republican front-runner’s lead in the GOP delegate count.
Illinois distributes only 15 delegates to the winner of the state. The remaining 54 are directly elected by the voters in each congressional district and pledged to presidential candidates. That means candidates who want the majority of delegates must win over diverse voters from urban city dwellers to suburban soccer moms to rural farmers, analysts said.
A RealClearPolitics average of recent polls showed Trump up 6.5 points over his closest competitor, Sen. Ted Cruz. A Chicago Tribune poll released earlier this month showed that Trump had a 10-point lead over the Texas Republican.
Analysts last week attributed Trump’s appeal among Illinois voters to his anti-free trade, anti-immigrant and anti-establishment views that may play well with working-class people out of a job because most manufacturing jobs have left the state.
“You look around and say, ‘My life sucks. It can’t be my fault. Donald Trump is telling me it’s somebody else’s fault, and I’m more than happy to listen,'” Chris Mooney, the director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois, told the Washington Examiner.
Cruz spent half a million dollars on television and digital ad buys ahead of Tuesday in Illinois, as well as Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina, Politico reported.
Trump’s campaign had to cancel a rally in Chicago over the weekend after protesters violently clashed with supporters of the businessman.
