Back in March, we had a post on Cook County (IL), where Chicago is located, and how it helped power Barack Obama to the Democratic Party presidential nomination (Obama won the Democratic Party primary in Cook County by 442,000 votes; overall, he beat Hillary Clinton by about 150,000 votes).

Here's a look at Cook County's election results for the 2008 presidential election.

In Chicago (pdf file):

Obama 898,655 85.3%
McCain 145,424 13.8%

Obama's margin of victory in the city of Chicago was over 750,000 votes (with 98% of all precincts reporting).

In Suburban Cook County (pdf file):

Obama 684,318 66.6%
McCain 331,614 32.3%

Obama's margin of victory in suburban Cook County was over 350,000 votes.

Overall, Obama's margin of victory in Cook County was about 1.1 million votes.

To put this in perspective, the largest county in the US, Los Angeles County, had a margin of victory for Obama of about 660,000, or about 60% of Cook County's margin, which is the second-largest county in the US.

If Cook County was a state, it would rank 20th in population. Remarkably, only two states had larger margins of victory for Obama: California (about 2,430,000) and New York (about 1,750,000) the first- and third-largest states respectively.

Texas, the second-largest state, showed a smaller margin of victory for McCain (about 950,000).

California, New York, and Chicago accounted for at least 70% of Obama's victory margin over McCain, or 5.2 million of Obama's approximate 7 million-vote victory.