Adding to the confusion is the system used by the Iowa Democratic Party to pick a winner in these caucuses, which is based on "state delegate equivalents" instead of actual votes.
They are set to meet on December 19th to issue final votes based on state-by-state contests.
But in the map by Charlie Cook, the founder of the Cook Political Report and a Southerner with Arkansas roots, it is pink, giving the Obama campaign a bit more hope based on the state's voting history.
Illinois is the seventh-most Democratic state in the country based on its voting in the last two presidential elections, trailing only five Northeastern states and Hawaii.
Each state within the House places one vote based on a vote among that state's representatives.
This electoral probability, the first forecast by the Upshot's presidential prediction model, is based on the voting history of each state and on roughly 300 state and national polls of the race conducted since mid-April.
We're giving you our best estimates, based on public polling, state vote histories and the reporting done by our campaign staff, on which way we think each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia will fall this year. .
The "state fundamentals" calculation that the FiveThirtyEight forecast considers along with the polls, which projects results based on each state's past voting history, demographics, economic conditions and fund-raising totals there, estimates that the most natural result would be a win for Mr. Romney by three percentage points.
Those votes are awarded to candidates based on the state's popular vote.
FairVote compared the current New York Times tally of delegates to what it would be in two alternative scenarios: if all states used winner-take-all to allocate delegates and if all states used a proportional method of allocation based on each state's popular vote.
