There have been several articles about the voting patterns in Chicago, and Chitown Kev did an excellent summary of what to watch in the election.
Turnout in the city was outstanding yesterday, with more than 50% of registered voters casting a ballot. To give you an idea of the dominance of the Democratic party in the city, total turnout was 773,366, and only 84,948 ballots were Republican. So more than 89% of the ballots in the City of Chicago were Democratic. (Source, Chicago Board of Elections).
We had four major elections to watch. Of course, there was the Presidential primary, and as Chitown Kev outlined, we had a contest for States Attorney for Cook County. Anita Alvarez currently holds the position, but she was largely responsible for withholding the video of the shooting of Laquan McDonald for more than a year, and a suspect was arrested and charged just hours after the State’s Attorney was forced under pressure to release the video. In addition to that egregious dereliction of duty, Alvarez has a history of over-charging suspects, which resulted in a number of acquittals.
In addition to those two primaries, we had a contest to replace the Cook County clerk of the Circuit Court, currently Dorothy Brown. Brown has been under investigation for a number of corruption charges, from collecting cash gifts from her employees to a contributor giving Brown’s husband a piece of property that he sold for a profit. The Democratic party withdrew their endorsement of Brown.
Finally, many of you know that the state of Illinois has been operating without a budget for nearly a year. Our Republican Governor, Bruce Rauner, is deadlocked with our Democratic House. Rauner will only sign a budget in exchange for concessions to weaken unions. Needless to say, our House Democrats stand firm in opposition — except for one: Ken Dunkin in the 5th state district. He has repeatedly sided with Rauner, preventing our legislature to pass badly-needed legislation to keep our state operating. He’s been terrible.
The results are a mix of good and bad news. As a supporter of Secretary Clinton, I’m glad that she carried the city of Chicago. In the other races, the results were as follows:
Anita Alvarez — defeated (hooray!)
Dorothy Brown — won (boo!)
Ken Dunkin — defeated (hooray!)
Chitown Kev’s blog had a great summary of what to watch for within the city. Chicago is divided into 50 wards, and with our strong neighborhood culture, the wards often define the demographics of the neighborhood. Below is a map by ward and precinct to show the Presidential primary results, and an imprecise summary of how the city voted.
www.dnainfo.com/...
Kev pointed out the wards in Boystown and Andersonville — neighborhoods that have a high concentration of LGBT people. If Secretary Clinton’s remarks last weekend about the Reagan’s impact on HIV and AIDS had an impact on the vote, we would have seen it in the 44th, 46th, 47th and 48th wards. In general, Secretary Clinton carried those wards.
Another key demographic was the Latino vote. Most of those votes are in two sections of the city: Humboldt Park (1st, 30th, 31st, 35th and 37th) is mostly Puerto Rican, while Pilsen and Bronzeville (25th, 11th and parts of the 2nd) are Mexican. From the map, it looks like the both neighborhoods went for Senator Sanders.
No surprise that the heavily black South side was a big source of votes for Secretary Clinton. The Northwest side, which is more blue collar, and the Southwest side, also mostly white and blue collar, were the big areas for Senator Sanders, while the Lakefront and South side were all Secretary Clinton.
Outside the city, two liberal suburbs, Evanston and Oak Park, went for Secretary Clinton. I don’t have a map, but this site will let you search by township and precinct. Overall, Secretary Clinton carried the Cook County suburbs.
** Late Edit: When I wrote this, I hadn’t realized that Geenius at Wrok wrote an excellent blog about the Chicago turnout.