Low overall turnout for runoff elections, despite increase in early voting
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Despite the stakes of the mayoral runoff election on Tuesday, most eligible Chicago voters didn't cast a ballot.
As of Tuesday night, turnout in the runoff election totaled about 35%, with 558,547 total ballots cast. With more than 90,000 mail-in ballots that could still come in and be counted over the next two weeks, that figure will certainly rise, though even if all those ballots are returned, turnout will still fall short of the 41% seen in the 2015 runoff election.
Chicago Board of Elections spokesman Max Bever said Tuesday's turnout was a slight improvement from the first round of voting on Feb. 28, when turnout stood at 32.1% before outstanding mail-in ballots came in over the next two weeks.
"We did worry that storms were going to drive people away, or just have a lower turnout on Election Day as general, like we just saw on Feb. 28, but we did see more people showing up, and a surge at the end," Bever said.
Bever said one interesting contrast between Feb. 28 and April 4 was the shift in turnout by age groups.
"On Feb. 28, voters 55 and up were driving a lot more of those votes. This time around, it was voters 55 and under. There was some vast improvement, especially in ages 25 to 34, and including in 18 to 24, too; 5,000 more votes, 17,000 more for 25 and up," he said. "This might not be huge dramatic increases, but it does make a lot of difference in an overall lower voter turnout like a municipal election."
As far as what parts of the city had more turnout, Bever said it was pretty similar to February.
"There was a lot of early voting in our Northwest and our Southwest Side wards, but the North Lakefront really turned out last night. Some of that's not a surprise. The 48th Ward, the 46th Ward did have competitive aldermanic races, but the 47th Ward really turned out, too," Bever said. "It's clear that people were taking advantage of early voting more than ever. This was an abbreviated season. We only had two weeks of early voting, but we broke some records heading into Election Day."
Bever noted that more than 30,000 people took advantage of early voting on Monday alone, the most in one day for a municipal election.
"It's still an overall low turnout. We'd always like to see that be improved for the future," he said.
Explore this interactive map to view how each precinct voted for Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas in the April 4 Chicago mayoral runoff election.
Here is a density map that shows the votes in a dot matrix format.
