What did we learn from this election in Illinois?
Although that question can be examined politically, it’s too early to do so productively. But it’s not premature to look at things from a procedural standpoint.
It’s generally important to compare elections based on cycles – to map 2024 against the presidential election in 2020 rather than the 2022 ballot with all the statewide offices – but given the way COVID-19 mitigations affected approaches to elections, as well as still getting used to new political maps, arguably the only constants are the U.S. and Illinois House districts.
As of noon Monday the Board of Elections reported receiving 832,898 of 1,270,986 mail-in ballots (65.5% return rate) along with 1,520,513 early in-person votes and 31,476 grace-period ballots (for voters who registered and cast ballots on the same day after the regular registration deadline). Altogether that’s 2,384,887 early votes.
Once everything is canvassed we can possibly project how things might shift in the future, but it’s likely 2024 is more useful for understanding 2028 than anything that’s happened before this year.
The big picture numbers are total ballots and turnout percentage (2020′s official total was 6,098,729 ballots from 8,364,099 registered voters, 72.92%), useful to assess voter involvement. But campaigns will closely watch county and precinct breakdowns for mail-in ballots, early in-person votes and grace period registration in attempts to build future strategy around how and when people vote.
Following the 2022 election, I predicted Illinoisans would notice strategic shifts via mailboxes, text messages, YouTube ads and legacy media like newspapers and radio. But not much is different here: My state House incumbent is unchallenged. The incumbent Senator is facing a challenger the party slated after the primary, but the campaign strategy makes it seem noncompetitive.
At the county level, candidates from both major parties are quite active. We’re still getting some amount of mail – it pales by comparison to 2020 – but noticing a marked uptick in text messages to any phone numbers the campaigns can identify. Yard signs are as popular as ever. Flags are prominent for both presidential candidates.
But that’s all just data. Today marks an important transition. Although campaign season never ends, neither does the business of running a government. Election results turn people from candidates to public officials. Whether you voted for them or against (or not at all) they still represent you.
Send an email. Follow social media. Sign up for a newsletter. Get on a mailing list. Legislators are theoretically accountable to everyone but in reality much more so to people they know and hear from regularly.
Constituent is not a passive role, and there’s no time like election afterglow to double down on your part in a representative government.
• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. Follow him on X @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.
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