Reply #29: Not really. Well, really.

[tomg]

If it is like many college towns - and I went to one and I now ( sort of) still live in one - there is a sharp divide between the college students, who tend to be more progressive, and the locals who are often more conservative, sometimes sharply in reaction to the college students. Traditional town-gown relationship stuff.

The real issue is how many college students are registered to vote in Champaign.If most are registered at "home," it is a very interesting- and calculated - move by the guy. He could be playing to the base there that actually votes there. For years, the town where I lived as a student was rabid right although it nationally had a reputation as somewhere to the left of Mao. When students started to stay on in major numbers, we slowly moved left, and now progressive left because we outnumbered them, but that has only been in the last twenty years or so.