Wall Street Willie Gets Easy Illinois Win

It looks like the polls were right in their predictions of the GOP Illinois primary. They said Wall Street Willie (aka Willard Mitt Romney) would get a double-digit win, and that's exactly what happened. As the returns started to come in, Romney took a commanding lead and kept it throughout the night. Here are the numbers from Illinois:

ILLINOIS (99% reporting)
Mitt Romney...............425,845  (46.73%)
Rick Santorum...............319,192  (35.02%)
Ron Paul...............84,783  (9.30%)
Newt Gingrich...............72,394  (7.94%)
Rick Perry...............5,438  (0.60%)
Buddy Roemer...............3,675  (0.40%)
TOTAL VOTES...............911,327

The only real surprise of the night (although not a big or important one) was that Ron Paul finished in third place, beating Newt Gingrich by about 12,000 votes. The polls had all predicted Gingrich would beat Paul.

There is one more primary scheduled for March. That will be next Saturday's (March 24th) primary in Louisiana. Rick Santorum has been leading in the polls down there. But will Romney's big Illinois victory give him a boost in Louisiana? We'll find out in three days.