Daily Chicagoan: The 2026 Primary Voter Guide

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Happy Friday. Here’s what you need to know from WTTW News on the upcoming primary election, a new study on CPD’s use of force and yes, dinosaurs.

WTTW News 2026 Voter Guide to the primary election.

WTTW News’ Voter Guide is your one-stop shop for everything you need to know before voting in the 2026 primary election. You’ll find candidate profiles that include detailed, issue-based questionnaires and an easy-to-navigate compilation of legal bar association ratings for the sometimes difficult-to-navigate judicial races. Before you dive into the guide, here are some basic but still important facts to keep in mind. Election Day is Tuesday, March 17, and early voting began in Chicago last week. If you’re voting by mail, your ballot will need to be postmarked by Tuesday, March 17, to be counted. Note that beginning this year, the USPS instituted a new policy that says a postmark no longer reflects the date a piece of mail is received by the service, but when it is processed, which can be days after its reception. Our Voter Toolbox is the place to go for information on how to vote early, where to vote and all the things you need to know about Election Day. We also pulled together the latest election and political coverage from our WTTW News team. How did we put it together?
To assemble the guide, we reached out to all candidates with a set of questions we think will help inform voters and reveal where they stand on the issues that matter most to you. Where do congressional candidates stand on tax policy? What do potential senators think about foreign policy? We hope their answers help clarify your vote. Our judicial guide (click here for Illinois Appellate Court, Cook County Circuit Court and Subcircuit judges) pulls together ratings from more than a dozen bar
associations in an easy-to-read format you can browse while in the voting booth. Some races to watch:
U.S. Senate After serving 14 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and 31 years in the U.S. Senate, Sen. Dick Durbin will not run for a sixth term, setting off a scramble for a rare open seat. Several Democratic and Republican candidates participated in our Voter Guide, including frontrunners like Juliana Stratton, Robin Kelly and Raja Krishnamoorthi. U.S. House Illinois has 17 congressional districts, which means there are 17 state-wide primaries to watch. Arguably, the most interesting race is Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, where longtime Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s decision to retire from Congress kick-started a massive multi-candidate primary. Evanston mayor Daniel Biss leads recent polling, but Illinois state Sen. Laura
Fine and journalist Kat Abughazaleh trail him.

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(WTTW News)

Chicago police officers disproportionately used force against Black Chicagoans, even when considering that they are more likely to be arrested or suspected of committing a crime, according to the results of a court-ordered, first-of-its-kind study that examined four years of data. CPD officers were also more likely to use force against Latino Chicagoans than White Chicagoans, according to the study. In addition, CPD officers used greater levels of force against both Black and Latino Chicagoans than White Chicagoans, according to the study. The study, conducted by social scientists from the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Pennsylvania hired by CPD brass and crafted with the approval of a court-appointed monitoring team, blamed “systemic factors” for the disparity, not the actions of individual officers.
More context: The study also found that the number of times CPD officers used force against Black and Latino Chicagoans “rose significantly toward the end of 2023,” according to the study, which did not attempt to determine the reason behind that increase.
A spokesperson for CPD said the department “continues to make significant strides in our consent decree compliance efforts. We know we have more work to do and will continue to build on the foundation we have set.” CPD brass has taken no action in response to the study’s findings, according to the CPD court-appointed monitoring team charged with keeping track of efforts to comply with the federal court order, known as the consent decree, prompted by a 2017 probe that found officers routinely violated the constitutional rights of Black and Latino Chicagoans. WTTW News is the first to report on the study, which was completed in March 2025 and is the first crafted by independent experts using scientifically valid methods to assess whether CPD is disproportionately using force against Black and Latino Chicagoans. The report was provided to WTTW News by the coalition of police reform groups that forced the city to agree to federal court oversight, which obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Paleontologist Paul Sereno marvels at the skull cast of the first dinosaur to be named from the Jenguebi fossil area in Niger, the spinosaurid Spinosaurus mirabilis. (Keith Ladzinski)

Posing with a replica skull from a previously unknown dinosaur species, paleontologist Paul Sereno at the University of Chicago shows off what makes this one special. One of Sereno’s arms extends only partway along the skull’s snout, while his other hand grabs a nearly two-foot crest poking out from its top. His body is mostly hidden behind rows of interlocking teeth. The unique size and shape of these bones from Spinosaurus mirabilis — the first Spinosaurus species discovered in over a century — gives important clues to the history of spinosaurids on Earth. Like other spinosaurids, this new species stood tall on two legs and used muscular arms to grab prey. And, like another close Spinosaurus relative, teeth poked out of its mouth — interlocked like a crocodile. What sets this new species apart from other known spinosaurids is its crest, which rather than fanning out of its back, poked out of its head like a horn. And from Niger’s Saharan to Chicago’s Fossil Lab and back again, the story of these ancient bones adds some perspective to our own brief stay on this planet.
After more analysis in the Fossil Lab, the bones will be sent back to Niger, which Sereno said is their “rightful stage.” There they will add to the growing collection at the Museum of the River in the nation’s capital. Meanwhile, replicas will be on display at the Chicago Children’s Museum at Navy Pier beginning in March. Sereno highlighted the remarkably quick turnaround from publishing research in a peer-reviewed journal to sharing the findings with children.