It wasn’t a sea change, but voting behavior shifted in Chicago and the state of Illinois, mirroring the rest of the nation and sweeping President-elect Donald Trump into office for a second term. 

While the Illinois Democratic supermajority isn’t at risk, the decreased vote share for Vice President Kamala Harris as compared to President Joe Biden in 2020 was evident in election results data from around the city and state. 

For the most part, the share of GOP voters in Chicago precincts rose only slightly. Unofficial numbers as of Tuesday morning showed Trump leading in the 41st Ward on the city’s far Northwest Side with about 51.29% of the vote. No Chicago wards were won by the GOP in the 2020 presidential race, though the 41st, represented by Ald. Anthony Napolitano, came closest, with about 51% voting for President Joe Biden.

Vote by mail, provisional and military/overseas ballots continued to be counted on a rolling basis through Tuesday. Unofficial turnout figures Tuesday morning showed 67.47% of registered voters in Chicago cast a ballot, down from about 73% in the 2020 general election.

The Chicago Board of Elections said it expected only a handful of the remaining 31,000 outstanding mail ballots to return properly postmarked by Tuesday’s deadline.

Though many ward boundaries changed in 2023, the shift to a greater share of Republican votes is still evident when it is mapped. The floor was raised for the Republican candidate in Chicago and the ceiling lowered for Democrats across many precincts.

Inflated Prices, Deflated Turnout

Voters in Illinois were driven by many of the same issues that affected people across the country, leading to decreased vote totals and a higher GOP share at the top of the ticket, researchers said. In most wards, it’s only a couple of percentage points different, but the needle still moved.

“We acted like a blue state, but the turnout, and certainly the percentage that Harris got, was lower than usual in Illinois, and in that sense, we acted like the rest of the nation,” said John S. Jackson, visiting professor from the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.

While the winner of the state always appeared obvious, the shift was predictable when considering issues important to voters, like the price of goods including eggs, bread and gasoline. Economics are usually a local issue, but they affected races for national incumbent parties across the globe in 2024, according to E.J. Fagan.

“Every country got hit by an economic problem at the same time. Every country got hit by inflation after COVID,” Fagan, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said about leaders on the right and left being voted out of office worldwide. “I think you have to point to the only variable that they're all experiencing, and that was inflation.”

Every governing party in the developed world holding elections lost vote share this year, according to an analysis by the Financial Times. This is obvious in the United States and Great Britain, where the party in power changed, but “an unprecedented shift” could also be seen in countries including France, Japan and India where the incumbent remained in control. Voters took revenge at the ballot box.

“By our usual measurements, economic conditions in this country are outstanding,” Jackson said, “but a whole lot of people didn't believe that.”

Clear Shifts

The shift in voting behavior can be seen from the results in the past two presidential elections in the 13th and 23rd wards on the city’s West Side. More than 30% of votes in both wards went to the GOP candidate in 2020.

Both wards, in Garfield Ridge and Clearing, show the Democratic candidate in the lead, but the gap closed considerably in 2024. Both wards are majority Latino, according to Census data, a group that shifted considerably since the last election according to exit polls.

Almost 47% of the vote in the 13th Ward went to Trump in 2024, according to unofficial Chicago Board of Elections data Tuesday morning. While the ward does not appear to be in danger of falling into GOP hands in future contests, it changed to a deeper purple shade this cycle. 

Reports following the election saw an increase in the share of the GOP vote by groups including working class voters and those with a high school education. 

These shifts did not change the outcome for Chicago or Illinois, but they follow a similar path to the trend in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona.

Working class voters are not all members of unions, and the demographic was no longer a lock for Democrats this year.

When interpreting the results, it is also critical to determine if the voters changed from Democrat to Republican since 2020, or were new voters supporting Trump. Future elections will help answer if the change was temporary or permanent.

The Republican campaign’s focus on the economy and immigration appears to have convinced people to vote. The negative impact of the potential policies adopted by the incoming administration and other factors could move swing voters to the other party in future elections.

“These economic conditions will be different in four years. The candidates will be different,” Fagan said. “I see no reason to believe that this is the start of a trend.” 

Will It Play in Peoria?

In a lot of ways, Illinois represents the typical makeup of the greater United States except for its governing party, and both campaigns tried messages that would apply to the typical voter. This approach calls back to an aphorism about America’s heartland: Will it play in Peoria?

The phrase refers to product testers or marketers testing whether an idea, product or performance will appeal to mainstream, middle-American tastes and sensibilities.

The heartland, including the suburbs, also behaved like the rest of the country at the ballot box. 

Outside of Chicago, voters in Cook, DuPage, Lake and Will counties all reported unofficial Democratic vote shares lower in 2024 than in 2020 as of Tuesday morning. 

About 49% of Will County voters cast a ballot for Harris, down from about 53% for Biden in 2020. Will County will count provisional and vote-by-mail ballots Tuesday, and the race is competitive.

McHenry County, which unofficial totals show Trump on top in 2020 and 2024, also recorded a lower share of Democratic Party votes in this year’s election, according to the latest figures.

The remaining steps for the Chicago election authority are the final adjudication of write-in results and any final vote difference reconciliation from the audit and obvious discrepancy checks. Usually, the final vote total matches the final count, according to Chicago Board of Elections spokesman Max Bever.

The Chicago proclamation of official results is scheduled to be released Nov. 26 at 10 a.m., and will include all qualified write-in candidate results.

Other factors, including race and gender, also were critically influential for some voters.

Jackson said the results may impact the Democrats’ decision to nominate a female presidential candidate for the foreseeable future, driven by the message.

“I think they saw a woman first,” Jackson said. “They saw a Black woman. They saw a Southeast Asian woman, and it’s just not the image that they were going to buy.”