In many Illinois districts, the primary effectively decides the general election. So what’s likely to happen at the ballot box, knowing that more people show up to vote for president than governor in Illinois, and fewer people vote in primaries than general elections?
As we pored over the numbers for previous off-cycle primaries, we were alarmed to see that over the past four gubernatorial cycles (2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022), roughly 1 in 5 registered voters here decided the outcome.
In raw numbers, here’s how it looks: Illinois had 8,107,797 registered voters in 2022, and only 1,757,872 — less than 22% — of them voted in the primary.
The stump speech that voters — or would-be voters — get about this time of year entails platitudes about exercising rights, not sitting on the sidelines, using your voice and so on. These are fine sentiments, and we have no wish to undermine them. One of the things that makes America, America, is free and fair elections and the protections to back them up. We can vote without fear of intimidation or suppression, and if that’s ever not the case, there are many institutions, including the Tribune, that would demand justice.
So stipulated. But we’d also like to acknowledge other problems keeping folks on the sidelines.
Low turnout reflects badly upon the electorate, yes, but it also reflects poorly on the system itself. In our view, Illinois primaries are effectively decided by a small minority because too many districts are engineered to be safe, too many races go uncontested and too few voters feel their vote matters. When a district is drawn to heavily favor one party, the general election becomes a formality, and the real contest shifts to a low-turnout primary.
Too often, many voters are deprived of meaningful choice at the ballot.
Economist Orphe Divounguy argued in a 2021 report that when political maps are drawn to heavily favor one party, it suppresses voter participation because many voters essentially have no alternative to the incumbent or dominant party candidate.
“Uncontested and lightly contested elections tend to skew policy in favor of powerful special interest groups at the expense of everyone else,” he said. “This is because low voter participation makes legislators more susceptible to the influence of lobbyists rather than prioritizing the service of ordinary voters.”
His research back then found that roughly half of all Illinois House races went uncontested between 2012 to 2020 and that this was linked to voter participation that was, on average, 7 percentage points lower in uncontested districts.
That was five years ago and looked specifically at one field. The pattern extends well beyond legislative races. In November 2024, Ballotpedia reported that 70% of the 1,183 elections it tracked in Illinois, across 17 types of offices, were uncontested, meaning voters had no real options.
The problem persists in this election cycle, particularly in legislative races where district lines heavily favor one party. In many of those districts, the general election is a foregone conclusion. Statewide offices reflect a related but distinct challenge: party weakness. Republicans, now marginalized in statewide contests, often struggle to recruit credible candidates. Treasurer Mike Frerichs, for example, faces no Republican challenger this cycle.
The lack of conservative candidates is glaring in Illinois, once a Republican state, which has seen Democrats capitalize on an aggressively partisan political mapmaking process (much as Republicans did in the past) to ice out political opposition.
Illinois is not alone in struggling with turnout. But when districts are engineered to predetermine outcomes, it compounds the problem. Illinois had the eighth-highest rate of uncontested elections in 2024, according to Ballotpedia.
We’ll still encourage voters to head to the polls this primary season. Most of these races have thoughtful, serious candidates on offer, at least in the primaries. But that won’t be true when it comes to the generals, and that reality underscores the need to fix Illinois’ legislative maps.
Structural competition is a prerequisite for democratic legitimacy and may help restore participation. Voters deserve options both now and in November.
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