For those of you keeping an eye on the 2019 Chicago Municipal elections here's a rundown of the many useful resources offered by Illinois Election Data.
Free Stuff:
Candidate List: Candidate filing starts tomorrow Monday, November 19th and ends on Monday, November 26th. Candidates for Mayor, Clerk and/or Treasurer have to file 12,500 valid petition signatures while candidates for alderman have to file 473 valid petition signatures, along with other required documents.
We have a CANDIDATE LIST that will be freely available to all and updated throughout. Right now we have candidates listed for every citywide and aldermanic office, mostly a combination of incumbents, announced candidates, candidates that have created a fundraising committee with the State Board of Elections and candidate names that have been sent to us by the many helpful people who have offered suggestions on social media (thank you!). Starting tomorrow we'll update the candidate list noting those who have filed, adding those who filed who we weren't aware of and after the filling deadline passes we'll remove those that didn't file. Once the process for signature objections/challenges begins we'll keep track of all of those objections, those who were removed or withdrawn and those that won their challenges. Keep an eye on the CANDIDATE LIST, it will be updated throughout.
Maps, Maps, Maps: If you're interested in past elections we have MAPS for the 2011 and 2015 Chicago Municipal elections. For the three citywide offices (Mayor, Clerk & Treasurer) we have MAPS for the entire city by both ward and precinct. For every aldermanic race in those two cycles we have results MAPPED by precinct.
For example if you wanted to see the results of the 2015 Chicago Mayoral runoff between Rahm Emanuel and Chuy Garcia those maps can be found here: (Emanuel by Ward/Precinct, Garcia by Ward/Precinct). If you want to see an example of an aldermanic race here are the mapped results by precinct for the 2011 election in the 47th ward between Ameya Pawar and Tom O'Donnell: (Pawar by precinct, O'Donnell by precinct).
Note: precinct boundaries change all of the time and in Chicago they were different in 2011 and 2015. You can download a list of the number of Chicago precincts in each ward in each election here.
Vote History: If you'd like to see statewide election results for each ward our ANALYSIS section has vote total history for statewide races by ward for general elections as well as Democratic and Republican primaries going back to the 90's.
Subscriber Info:
Immediate Notifications: Subscribers can SIGN UP to receive immediate notifications of selected campaign finance filings, a great tool for campaign managers to keep an eye on the latest developments from their opponents and for PAC directors trying to stay on top of the latest developments in various campaigns. Subscribers can sign up to receive notifications of specified filings within a minute or two of being filed (my server checks for new filings every 2 minutes). You can choose whether to be notified by email, text or iPhone alert.
A Basic subscription is $15.00/month and allows for up to 10 different types of notifications along with full access to all up to the minute information on districts, races and campaign financial reports for the current election cycle. For anyone who needs to track more than just 10 types of notifications a Deluxe subscription is available for $30.00/month for unlimited notifications along with full access to all up to the minute information on districts, races and campaign financial reports. Step by step instructions are available along the right side of the SIGN UP page.
Note: the iPhone app is still the best way to receive immediate notifications but the app itself is a bit out of date. I hope to update the features available in the app soon but I have to buy a new Mac first so it won't be right away.
District Financial Profiles: Subscribers also have access to the financial profile for every race, both citywide races and aldermanic races. Here's an example, here is the current financial profile for the likely candidates in the 14th Ward: example. These profiles show the current cash and past spending for each candidate's committee plus any affiliated committees. For example Alderman Burke has his own candidate committee along with the ward fund and his Burnham Committee PAC. Wherever possible we've tried to include these affiliated committees. Subscribers can view these totals for every race in the SUBSCRIBERS section.
Current Cash - All Candidates: Subscribers also have access to the current estimated cash position of all candidates, here's an example. This report combines the cash on hand from the last quarterly filing plus any cash reported on A-1's since minus any cash out reported on B-1's since (unlikely for these committees but it's there anyway) and this gives you an estimated cash available. Because we see large cash in on A-1's in between quarterly filings but do not have much info about spending this total does not take into account any normal spending by the committee since the last quarterly report so it's more of a guide than an exact approximation. As with the district financial profiles we've also included the affiliated committees as you can see in the example below Toni Preckwinkle. Subscribers can view these totals for every race in the SUBSCRIBERS section.
I hope you find these resources useful. Good luck!
