Yes, many Chicago voters shifted right this election, but even more of them didn’t show up to vote blue.
A WBEZ analysis finds that a large part of Republican Donald Trump’s doubling support in Chicago was due to a staggering dropoff in Democratic voter turnout rather than an increase in Trump voters.
Citywide, the former president saw a 21,720-vote bump compared to 2020, according to votes tallied through Monday, but Vice President Kamala Harris’ vote total was 175,311 votes behind President Joe Biden’s in 2020.
“The real story is you have fewer people voting” said Delmarie Cobb, a Democratic political and media consultant.
The city’s overall voter turnout — 67.47%% as of Monday — was the second-lowest it’s been in a presidential general election since at least 1944. In that span, only once has citywide turnout fell below that mark — 63.17% in 1996.
A steep decline in voter turnout, especially in the areas of the city that most reliably vote blue, show that a vast number of Democrats who stayed home this election played a significant role in Chicago’s rightward shift this year.
Turnout was lowest in the most Democratic-leaning parts of the city, communities where Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won more than 90% of the vote in 2020 and 2016, according to WBEZ’s analysis.
Election boundaries were redrawn after the 2020 census so, in order to compare results between election years, WBEZ allocated precinct-level votes and registered voter totals into 77 community area boundaries based on the amount of geographic area overlap between precincts and communities.
Where in Chicago did a Democratic dropoff happen?
Harris lost more votes, in comparison to the votes Biden received four years ago, than Trump gained in all but one community area in Chicago.
But this dropoff in votes cast for Democrats was most pronounced in majority-Black communities.
Cobb believes it’s because a lot of Black voters skipped this election, not because they voted for Trump.
“What the Democrats fail to understand … is that they believe that Black voters have nowhere else to go. What they don’t understand is when we feel we have nowhere else to go, we go nowhere. We don’t vote. So it’s not that we vote Republican, it’s that we don’t vote,” Cobb said.
“Most Black people know that Donald Trump is not for them. His policies are not for us,” Cobb said. “The majority of people who didn’t turn out to vote, didn’t do so because they stayed home, and it was to make a statement to the Democrats that, you know, we’re disgusted by all of it.”
Cobb said the Democrats failed to provide the messaging necessary to motivate their supporters to turn out and vote.
“Part of the reason [Black voters] are disgusted by it is because they don’t know the full story,” she said. “They didn’t hear the Democrat side of the story.”
The dropoff in Democratic votes also occurred in communities where Trump’s share of the vote appeared to increase the most.
Many majority-Latino communities saw the largest increases in Trump’s share of the vote.
For example, Trump’s share of the vote grew the most in South Lawndale, known as Little Village, where he more than doubled his support from 12% in 2020 to 30% in 2024.
But these areas also saw significant declines in the number of votes cast for Harris relative to votes for Biden in 2020 and Clinton in 2016.
In South Lawndale, Trump gained about 1,400 votes compared to four years ago. Harris on the other hand got 5,000 fewer votes there compared to Biden.
Amy Qin is a data reporter for WBEZ. Follow her at @amyqin12.