Illinois Primary Polls 2016: Democrats Split, Republican Results A Question Of How Much

The most recent 2016 Illinois primary polls are predicting results that are likely to come down to just a few points for both Republicans and Democrats — with no real clear frontrunner on either side.

Only one recent poll released leading into the 2016 Illinois primary has a candidate more than 10 percent ahead of his or her closest rival. While Democrats have proportionally allocated delegates across the nation, Republicans will be in only one of two states making its pick on Tuesday without a winner-take-all system.

That’s big news, considering that a sizable 69 GOP delegates will be on the table. Though closer than some of the day’s other races, Donald Trump is likely to take the largest portion of these Republican convention votes. In the three most recent 2016 Illinois primary polls, Donald is ahead by between 4 and 9 percent. He is trailed by Ted Cruz, who is also narrowly beating out John Kasich. Marco Rubio comes in last in every version of the results.

The latest of these Illinois primary polls comes from CBS News and YouGov, and it gives Trump his slimmest lead in the Land of Lincoln yet. At 38 percent, he is just digits ahead of his 2016 competitor, Ted, at 34 percent. These fresh numbers also give Cruz his biggest lead to-date on John Kasich, who trails behind at 16 percent with less than half the support of the Texas senator. Marco is, again, in dead last among Republicans, with barely over a tenth of the vote.

While a few days older, the We Ask America poll features the largest sample size — 1,009 likely voters — of any of the Illinois primary soothsaying. In that set of data, Donald has a much more significantly wrapped-up lead on the other 2016 Republican hopefuls: He towers ahead with 33 percent of the vote to Ted’s 22 percent. Kasich is also much closer in this poll, lagging just 2 points behind Cruz at 18 percent. Rubio, again, places a distant fourth.

While the Republican side is more of nail biter than some of the GOP’s other selections, the Democrats head into voting with no idea who is going to come out on top. Of the three major Illinois primary polls released this month, two lean Hillary Clinton, and one went to Bernie Sanders. Neither of the three mark a definitive advantage. Hillary holds the largest spread of the bunch, with a 6-percent up on Bernie in the NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll, but it’s the oldest of the group and has the smallest sample size.

Alternatively, Sanders is beating out Clinton by 2 percent in CBS/YouGov’s results. Still, it would be foolish to read too much into this particular Illinois primary poll’s spread, as the margin of error was 5.5 percent — even greater than Bernie’s slight gain. The same could be said for Hillary’s 3-percent jump in the Public Policy Polling data. If these 2016 forecasts prove true, the pair of Democrats will be battling it out for an almost negligible upper hand for the 156 delegates and 26 superdelegates the state offers.

Aside from the tight polls in the Illinois primary, March 14 has been referred as “the other Super Tuesday” in the media due to the huge amount of delegates up for grabs. On the Republican side, 367 delegates are available — the majority of which are winner-take-all. The Democratic side is a bit more tricky, with its divide between delegates and superdelegates. In total, the five states up to bat tomorrow hold 802 delegates, 102 of which are unpledged.

Now that you’ve seen the latest 2016 Illinois primary polls for Democrats and Republicans, you can also check out the Inquisitr‘s breakdown of Florida and Ohio‘s results.

[Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images]