The presidential vote for the city of Chicago and state of Illinois showed that Donald Trump made gains in this deep blue city and state with Tuesday marking the best he has done in his three times on the ballot.
Whether this is a trend with impact on city and state politics remains to be seen.
In Chicago, Trump jumped to 22.01% of the city vote in 2024, up from 12.41% of the city vote in 2016, according to unofficial returns. The 41st Ward on the Far Northwest Side of the city is the only one where Trump won more than half the votes on Tuesday.
In Illinois, Trump’s statewide vote grew to 45.3% this year, up from 38.76% in 2016, according to unofficial returns.
For now, the Chicago and Illinois returns for Trump — the former and future president — tell a story of trend of a slowly growing GOP city and state vote. The state’s 19 Electoral College votes, however, still went to Vice President Kamala Harris, who called Trump on Wednesday to concede.
Trump’s popularity in Illinois
In terms of percentage, Trump bested every Republican running for president in Illinois since 1992, according to unofficial returns as reported by The New York Times.
Every Democrat has won Illinois since 1992, with the highest vote-getter in that stretch being favorite son Barack Obama.
The stats: With 93% of the returns counted as of Wednesday afternoon, the tally was 53.3% for Harris and 45.3% for Trump.
Trump’s popularity in Chicago
For these past three elections, voters in the same handful of heavily white Chicago wards gave more than a quarter of their votes to Trump. Tuesday was Trump’s high point.
Since this was the third time Trump was on the ballot, we have some history to work with.
In 2016, the GOP ticket of Trump and Mike Pence got 12.41% of the Chicago vote compared to the Democratic ticket of Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, which won 83.73% of the vote across the city’s 50 wards.
In 2020, the Trump-Pence ticket improved, getting 15.83% of the vote, to 82.52% for Joe Biden and Harris.
And in 2024, with 1,251 of the city’s 1,291 precincts in, the Trump-Vance ticket got 22.01% of the vote. Harris-Tim Walz won 76.79%.
Because Chicago remains very much a segregated city, the ward returns can be broken down along race and ethnic lines.
For the past three elections, voters in the same handful of heavily white wards gave the most support to Trump. Voters in majority-Black wards on the South and West sides overwhelmingly backed Democrats.
In 2020, there were 15 majority-Black wards where more than 90% voted for Biden. On Tuesday, there were only seven majority-Black wards where more than 90% voted for Harris.
Trump picked up votes in the Far North Side wards where Orthodox Jewish voters live, especially in the 50th Ward. While most Jews in the U.S. tend to be centrist to liberal/progressive Democrats, Orthodox Jews, who are more politically conservative, tend to be Republican. And this year’s election came as the Israel-Hamas war has raged for more than a year and antisemitism is on the rise.
For some Trump voters in Chicago, the shooting last Saturday — the Jewish Sabbath — of a 39-year-old man on his way to a West Ridge synagogue, by a man charged with attempted murder and a hate crime, likely only reinforced their choice.
Contributing: WBEZ’s Alden Loury.