The Illinois general election was held on November 3, 2020. Primary elections, held using an

open primary Primary elections or primaries are elections held to determine which candidates will run in an upcoming general election. In a partisan primary, a political party selects a candidate. Depending on the state and/or party, there may be an "open pri ...

system, took place on March 17, 2020.

Election information

Impact of COVID-19

Illinois held its primary elections as scheduled despite concerns over the

COVID-19 pandemic in the United States On December 31, 2019, China announced the discovery of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan. The first American case was reported on January 20, and United States Department of Health and Human Services, Health and Human Services Secreta ...

. State election officials believed that this depressed voter turnout. On June 16, 2020, Governor

JB Pritzker Jay Robert Pritzker (born January 19, 1965) is an American businessman and politician serving since 2019 as the 43rd governor of Illinois. A member of the wealthy Pritzker family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain, Pritzker has started several vent ...

signed a bill aimed at making it safer to vote in the November election. To encourage voting by mail, citizens who voted in the primary election, the 2019 local elections, or the 2018 general election were to be sent applications for mail-in ballots by August 1, 2020. The bill also made November 3 a state holiday for schools and government offices, to reduce the number of people present at voting sites.

Turnout

Primary election

In the primary election, turnout was 28.36%, with 2,279,439 votes cast. Democratic ballots accounted for 74.80% of ballots, while Republican ballots accounted for 24.72%. Data shows that mail-in ballots likely accounted for roughly 10% of votes cast. Over 636,000 of votes cast were done so as early votes. Primary election voting occurred amid concerns over the

, and election officials in Illinois acknowledged that they believed the turnout was unusually low. The turnout rate was an 18.20 percentage point decrease from the turnout in

2016 2016 was designated as: * International Year of Pulses by the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly. * International Year of Global Understanding (IYGU) by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the Internationa ...

primaries. However, the turnout was not extraordinarily low, as four out of the past ten Illinois primaries in presidential election years had seen turnout under 30%, with

2000 2000 was designated as the International Year for the Culture of Peace and the World Mathematics, Mathematical Year. Popular culture holds the year 2000 as the first year of the 21st century and the 3rd millennium, because of a tende ...

having seen an even lower primary election turnout than 2020. Primary election turnout by county

General election

General election turnout was 72.92%. Every county in the state had more than a majority of registered voters cast ballots. General election turnout by county

Federal elections

United States President

Illinois was won by the Democratic

ticket Ticket or tickets may refer to: Slips of paper * Lottery ticket * Parking ticket, a ticket confirming that the parking fee was paid (and the time of the parking start) * Toll ticket, a slip of paper used to indicate where vehicles entered a to ...

Joe Biden Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (born November 20, 1942) is an American politician who was the 46th president of the United States from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he served as the 47th vice p ...

and

Kamala Harris Kamala Devi Harris ( ; born October 20, 1964) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 49th vice president of the United States from 2021 to 2025 under President Joe Biden. She is the first female, first African American, and ...

. This was the eighth consecutive presidential election in which Illinois had voted for the Democratic ticket.

United States Senate

Illinois' Class 2 United States Senate seat was up for election. Incumbent Democrat

Dick Durbin Richard Joseph Durbin (born November 21, 1944) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, senior United States senator from the state of Illinois, a seat he has held since 1997. A member of the Dem ...

won a fifth term.

United States House

All eighteen of Illinois' congressional seats were up for reelection.

State elections

State House of Representatives

Elections were held for all 118 seats in the

Illinois House of Representatives The Illinois House of Representatives is the lower house of the Illinois General Assembly. The body was created by the first Illinois Constitution adopted in 1818. The House under the constitution as amended in 1980 consists of 118 representativ ...

. Democrats maintained their majority.

State senate

Elections were held for 22 out of 59 seats in the

Illinois Senate The Illinois Senate is the upper chamber of the Illinois General Assembly, the legislative branch of the government of the State of Illinois in the United States. The body was created by the first state constitution adopted in 1818. Under the ...

. Democrats maintained their supermajority.

Judicial elections

Elections were held for three seats in the

Supreme Court of Illinois The Supreme Court of Illinois is the state supreme court, the highest court of the judiciary of Illinois. The court's authority is granted in Article VI of the current Illinois Constitution, which provides for seven justices elected from the ...

and 10 seats in the

Illinois Appellate Court The Illinois Appellate Court is the court of first appeal for civil and criminal cases rising in the Illinois circuit courts. In Illinois, litigants generally have a right to first appeal from final decisions or judgements of the circuit court ...

Ballot measure

Illinois Fair Tax

Illinois voters rejected the Illinois Fair Tax amendment, known formally as the "Allow for Graduated Income Tax Amendment", an amendment that appeared on ballots statewide in the general election. This was placed on the ballot by the state legislature in June 2019, and was a key campaign issue in Governor

J. B. Pritzker Jay Robert Pritzker (born January 19, 1965) is an American businessman and politician serving since 2019 as the 43rd governor of Illinois. A member of the wealthy Pritzker family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain, Pritzker has started several vent ...

's 2018 election. In order to be approved, the measure had been required to receive either 60% support among those specifically voting on the amendment or 50% support among all ballots cast in the state's election. If it had been approved, the measure would have amended the

Constitution of Illinois The Constitution of the State of Illinois is the governing document of the state of Illinois. There have been four Illinois Constitutions, with the fourth version adopted in 1970. That constitution is referred to as the "Constitution of Illinois ...

to allow for a graduated

income tax An income tax is a tax imposed on individuals or entities (taxpayers) in respect of the income or profits earned by them (commonly called taxable income). Income tax generally is computed as the product of a tax rate times the taxable income. Tax ...

in the state.

Local elections

Local elections are also being held. These include county elections.

Cook County

Cook County Cook County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of Illinois and the second-most-populous county in the United States, after Los Angeles County, California. More than 40 percent of all residents of Illinois live within Cook County. ...

, elections was held for

State's Attorney In the United States, a district attorney (DA), county attorney, county prosecutor, state attorney, state's attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney, or solicitor is the chief prosecutor or chief law enforcement officer represen ...

, Clerk of the Circuit Court, one seat on the Board of Review, 3 seats on the Water Reclamation District Board, and several judgeships in the

Circuit Court of Cook County The Circuit Court of Cook County is the largest of the 25 Illinois circuit courts, circuit courts (trial courts of original jurisdiction, original and general jurisdiction) in the judiciary of Illinois as well as one of the largest unified cour ...

and its subcircuits.

Notes

References

External links

* * * (state affiliate of the U.S.

League of Women Voters The League of Women Voters (LWV) is a nonpartisan American nonprofit political organization. Founded in 1920, its ongoing major activities include Voter registration, registering voters, providing voter information, boosting voter turnout and adv ...

) * {{2020 United States elections

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...