It’s interesting—in coverage of both the Chicago Tribune polls and the recent ABC7 poll, I haven’t seen any mention of probable/likely voting differences between men or women (or, for that matter, age). But there’s a new poll from the Illinois Retail Merchants Association with a pretty big sample size of 2,252 likely voters: 1496 women, 636 men, and 120 refused.
Rahm Emanuel polled at 67 percent among women, and "only" 59 percent among men; Gery Chico polled at 15 percent with women, 22.5 percent with men. The other big surprise is that it has Emanuel with 70 percent of the black vote, which sounds really high, but then again the last couple Trib polls showed a substantial increase in the undecided vote among blacks, and the IRMA poll doesn’t allow undecided votes.
Also of note: Emanuel does better in the IRMA poll the older the poll respondent is; Chico’s sweet spot is 35-54; Miguel Del Valle, probably unsurprisingly, does best in the 18-35 demographic.
Anyway, while I could easily speculate on reasons a lot of demographic groups would find Rahm Emanuel more or less appealing, I honestly have no idea why he might have a considerable advantage over Gery Chico with women.