National Affairs: KEY STATE-ILLINOIS

Illinois played a decisive role in the 1948 election. The state's 27 electoral votes (down one from 1948) may be equally significant this year.

Background: Illinois, once considered a Republican state, has gone Democratic in every presidential election since 1932. Since 1942 it has gone Republican in off-year congressional elections. In 1946 the Republican vote for the House of Representatives was 56.5% of the major party total, leading to widespread G.O.P. belief that Illinois was safe for Dewey in 1948. He lost it when the normal Republican downstate majority failed to materialize. Truman's statewide plurality was only 33,612 out of 3,984,046 votes cast for President. An important oddity of the 1948 Illinois election is that Henry Wallace's name was not on the ballot and he received only about 5,000 write-in votes. In some other important states (New York, California), Republicans comparing this year's prospects with 1948 have to presume that the large 1948 Wallace vote (509,559 in New York, 190,381 in California) will go to Stevenson this year. In Illinois the Wallace weight is unimportant.

In Illinois 1950 congressional elections the Republicans got 53.9% of the major party vote—a drop from their 1946 off-year showing. The state now has 18 Republican Congressmen and eight Democrats. One Senator, Paul Douglas, is a Democrat, one, Everett Dirksen, a Republican. Neither Senate seat is up this year.

In 1948 Stevenson got a thumping plurality of 572,067 votes—highest ever given a candidate for governor —after a vigorous campaign against Governor Dwight Green, who was running for a third term, although his administration had been thoroughly discredited.

Chicago is the Democratic stronghold, usually producing pluralities of around 250,000. The Chicago Democratic machine is the most effective in the U.S. Although Chicago's boss Jacob ("Jack") Arvey is himself not tainted with corruption, organized crime nourishes in Chicago. Republicans frequently charge that the underworld is protected by members of Arvey's organization. The Kefauver Senate committee called Chicago "a focal point for the activities of organized criminals in the U.S."

For Governor: Though most Democratic leaders would have preferred Secretary of State Edward J. Barrett, a noted vote-getter, at Adlai Stevenson's insistence they gave the gubernatorial nomination to bulky, 56-year-old Lieut. Governor Sherwood Dixon. Many Democratic leaders are still openly unhappy about

Dixon, a worthy man but a dull campaigner.

Dixon's opponent, 38-year-old William G. Stratton, served in Congress (1941-43 and 1944-49) and is currently state treasurer. Slight and hatchet-faced, Stratton, an extreme conservative, is conducting a shrill-voiced campaign primarily against Adlai Stevenson ("The most expensive governor in Illinois history"), and dismisses Dixon as "the hand-picked candidate" of Harry Truman's hand-picked man.

Republican Stratton is regarded as an effective campaigner who will beat Dixon unless a Stevenson sweep carries the rest of the ticket along with it.