[LouisVanDerWright]

I've been overseas and haven't been able to log in much. Cold weather and low turnout hurt Rahm because his supporters simply are not as motivated as the groups of people who are pissed at him. Luckily for Rahm, the deck is stacked in his favor for the runoff.

I forget where I was reading it, but 7 of the 19 wards with Aldermanic runnoffs were won by Chuy, 9 of them were won handily by Rahm, and the other 3 were leaning Rahm. While there will be ballots in all wards, it's difficult to get people to turn out for a single candidate ballot and turnout in the wards with aldermanic runoffs will undoubtedly be significantly higher than in those without. None of the aldermen in Chuy's SW and NW side strongholds are going to runoff. That alone could be a killer for him as he will have to work 2X as hard just to maintain the votes in his core constituency. I think Chuy will be hurt the most by the outright victory of hipster aldermen like Carlos Rosa and Joe Moreno who seem to have been the only wards with plurality white populations that went in favor of Chuy. Most of the NW side hipsters hate Rahm as a part of their moral outrage shtick and I'm not sure they will come out if Moreno isn't eeking out a win or they don't have the option to vote for the first openly gay hispanic on city council.

Theoretically Rahm has a major structural advantage going into the runoff election, but he could still screw it up. I heard a lot of Chuy supporters lamenting that "if the weather was better we might have won, just wait until spring when it's nicer" which simply isn't the case, poor weather usually hurts the incumbent.

In any case, Chuy's numbers surprised, but I still don't see him adding another 16% to them before Rahm can add 5%. Things will be a lot hairier for Rahm though now that he let this go to runoff.