Illinois

Democrat Juliana Stratton won the Senate race by 25.3 points over Republican Don Tracy, keeping the seat for her party, and Gov. JB Pritzker won a third term by 24.6 over Republican Darren Bailey.¹ Kamala Harris had carried Illinois by 11.0. Democrats won the four other statewide offices on the ballot, all of which they already held. One has a new occupant: Margaret Croke won the comptroller’s office, which Susana Mendoza gave up to run for mayor of Chicago.² No U.S. House seat changed hands. The delegation stayed at 14 Democrats and three Republicans, and the closest of the 17 races was decided by 17.6 points.

The Senate race ran 14.4 points ahead of Harris’s margin. Stratton drew 84 votes for every 100 Harris won and Tracy drew 62 for every 100 of Donald Trump’s. Turnout was a little above the last midterm’s: the votes counted come to 102% of the 2022 total and 75% of the 2024 presidential vote.

The Chicago area moved furthest and the countryside least. The Chicago metro area, which cast 66% of the state’s 2024 vote, went from D+27.3 to D+45.2, a move of 17.9 points; Tracy drew 55 votes there for every 100 of Trump’s. Illinois’s part of the St. Louis area moved 10.3 points and stayed Republican, at R+3.3. The smaller metro areas, with 15% of the vote, crossed over, from R+5.2 to D+4.6. The small towns and rural counties moved 4.8 points, from R+38.5 to R+33.7.

McHenry County, in the Chicago metro area, is the larger of the two counties that voted for Trump in 2024 and for Stratton this year. It went from R+5.3 to D+11.0 on 114,667 votes. Will County, in the same metro area, went from D+1.6 to D+19.3, and Kendall County from D+1.5 to D+19.9. The widest swing among the big counties was in the biggest: Cook County went from D+42.0 to D+60.9 on 1,538,797 votes. The other way, toward the Republicans, went seven counties, among them Adams and Vermilion.

Democrats keep the governorship and both chambers, with larger majorities. In our count they went from 40 to 45 of 59 state Senate seats and from 78 to 83 of 118 House seats. Capitol News Illinois, on November 10, had the House at 84 Democrats to 34 Republicans and the Senate at 45 to 14, both records, with one Republican incumbent’s race in each chamber not settled.³ A veto override takes three-fifths of the members elected to each house, in Ballotpedia’s reproduction of the state constitution, and Democrats held that margin in both chambers before the election.^{4, 5} Senate President Don Harmon said on November 4: “We’ve fought to lower costs, improve healthcare and stop the Trump administration in its tracks.”⁵

The House will have a new leader. Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch announced in the week after the election that he would not seek a fourth term in the post. House Democrats will choose his successor in January, immediately after the new General Assembly is sworn in, and the fall veto session begins on November 17.⁶

Democrats still hold both chambers and the governor’s office, the posts that pass and sign the state’s legislative maps. Under the constitution as Ballotpedia reproduces it, the General Assembly redraws the state Senate and House districts by law in the year after each census, and the bill goes to the governor. If no plan is in effect by June 30 of that year, the job passes to an eight-member commission with no more than four members from one party.⁴

On November 4, the day after the election, Pritzker announced a 200-point national agenda for congressional Democrats, among its items immigration reform, abortion rights and a higher federal minimum wage.⁷ Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias won another term while running for mayor of Chicago in the municipal election of February 2027.²

Chicago elected all 21 members of its school board for the first time. Jessica Biggs, who was not endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, won the race for board president over the union’s candidate, Hilario Dominguez, 49% to 31%, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.¹ Chalkbeat reported on November 5 that candidates backed by groups opposed to the union’s influence on the board, Biggs among them, would hold 11 of the 21 seats, and that the union’s endorsed candidates could reach nine.⁸ By November 12 three close races had gone to union-backed candidates, and candidates backed by groups that favor school choice were left with a narrow majority.⁹

Republicans kept the three U.S. House seats they held, the closest of them Darin LaHood’s, by 17.6 points; Mary Miller won by 33.8 and Mike Bost by 39.0. Most of the map stayed Republican too: 86 of the state’s 102 counties voted for Tracy, and the small towns and rural counties gave him a margin of 33.7 points. In the legislature the party had lost six House seats and five Senate seats by November 10. “Voters really were sending us a message about the way we govern,” the state party chair, Bob Grogan, told Capitol News Illinois.³

Tammy Duckworth’s Senate seat will be on the ballot in 2028, in a state that voted D+11.0 for president in 2024 and D+25.3 in this year’s Senate race. Two dates come sooner. House Democrats elect a speaker in January, and Chicago votes for mayor in February 2027 with the newly re-elected secretary of state among the candidates.^{2, 6}

A few results were still unsettled. Capitol News Illinois reported on November 10 that the race of Republican Rep. Jeff Keicher was too close to call and that of Republican Sen. Dave Syverson was undecided; both had trailed on election night and were ahead by November 6.^{2, 3} Our count has 35 Republicans in the House, one more than Capitol News Illinois counted. One Chicago school board race, District 6a, was undecided on November 12, with Isaiah White 145 votes ahead of the incumbent, Anusha Thotakura. The official proclamation of those results is scheduled for November 24.⁹