These links will have all my live data tonight:
| Statewide Races IL - President IL - US Senate IL - Comptroller | General Assembly Races Illinois State Senate Illinois State House |
What to Watch For
Final Early and Vote By Mail Totals
| Total Vote By Mail Applications: | 493,333 |
| Total VBM Ballots Returned: | 352,428 |
| Return Rate: | 71% |
| Total Early Voters: | 1,390,019 |
| Total Grace Period Voters: | 44,722 |
| Total Already Voted: | 1,787,169 |
| Total VBM Ballots Outstanding: | 140,905 |
With 140,905 outstanding vote by mail ballots any statewide race closer than that could still be affected by late arriving mail ballots. Also, keep in mind that the election authorities are no longer able to count the votes they already have, the early and mail votes, prior to the polls closing on election night. They used to get a head start counting those votes prior to 7pm, the Attorney General clarified that they cannot do that so in some of these jurisdictions those votes will get counted on election night along with the in-precinct votes and in others those votes will be counted tomorrow or in the following few days.
National
This seems like Trump's most plausible path to 270, it involves winning all of Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, New Hampshire, Nevada, Arizona and Iowa, plus the available congressional districts in Maine and Nebraska. The eastern timezone states will probably tell us a lot early in the night.
If Trump is doing well he'll be in a position to win in FL, OH, NC and NH and will be competitive in MI and PA. If Trump wins either of MI or PA a number of paths open up, otherwise he pretty much has to run the table in the swing states.
If Clinton is doing well she'll be winning MI and PA and possibly NH. If she wins all three she probably wins (although she could substitute Nevada for New Hampshire later in the night too), if she wins any of FL, NC or OH it's hard to find a path for Trump and she probably has it locked down.
US Senate - Illinois
The best benchmark for this race is Kirk's last victory in 2010. That year was a strong Republican year while this year is not expected to be. Here are two things to keep an eye on.
Downstate - In 2010 the downstate 96 counties were especially strong for the Republicans. Kirk and Brady both got 59% of the vote. The Democrats rebounded in 2012, Romney only got about 53% of the vote there, but the Republicans came back strong in 2014 when Rauner took 61%. Can Kirk replicate the downstate Republican performance of 2010 and 2014 or will the Democrats improve as they did in 2012?
On the Democratic side there is some evidence to suggest that 2010 and 2014 were historically bad. In 2010 Quinn and Giannoulias both took 34% in the downstate 96 counties, same with Quinn in 2014. Even Carol Moseley-Braun took 37% in 1998 and Blagojevich got 40% in his 2006 re-elect, both were thought to be unpopular downstate. In 2004 Kerry took 45% and in 2000 Gore got 46%. The downstate 96 counties will probably make up about 38% of the total statewide vote so Duckworth doesn't necessarily need to hit the high water marks here, she just has to be better than the atrocious Democratic years of 2010 and 2014.
Suburbs (especially the northern ones) - in 2010 Kirk won his race by about a point and a half and Brady lost to Quinn by about half a point. Most of the difference came in the Cook County suburbs and the collars and most of that difference came in the northern end. Kirk had represented the north shore in Congress and those voters rewarded him in his Senate race. Kirk did about three and a half points better than Brady in the 5 traditional collar counties combined but it was even more pronounced in Lake County where the difference was six and a half points (56.6% to 50.1%). He's going to need to run just as strong in Lake County again to help his chances.
Tonight we won't have the township by township results in Cook County (I don't expect, they usually aren't available until morning) but we will have the results in the Cook County suburbs overall. Six years ago Kirk ran four points better than Brady (43.5% to 39.5%), he's going to need to do something similar to help his chances.
Comptroller
We haven't had much polling in this race, at least not recently, so I don't know what to make of this race. The external factors certainly favor the Democrats but the spending favored Munger. I'll probably keep an eye on this race relative to the 2014 State Treasurer's race where Frerichs just barely edged Cross.
The other thing to keep an eye on will be the totals by media market. Both candidates have been on TV but Munger has had more money to spend. It will be interesting to see if there were media markets where she was on TV and Mendoza wasn't and if that shows up in the vote totals.
Housekeeping
I'm going to turn off the system that runs live totals for all of the General Assembly races, each time those pages load the server runs all the calculations to pull the live totals. I want to keep the demand on the server light tonight so you can find a static copy of those current totals HERE.
