2023 Chicago Mayoral/Aldermanic Elections

[Oryxslayer]

I will most likely vote for the UWF candidate Brandon Johnson and then Chuy in the runoff.

Lori Lightfoot will not be reelected, she has embarrassed herself nationally and has angered her old allies while not gaining any new one's. She has only love from the lakefront liberals seeking to gentrify the city. Saying this, ultimately the city is going to go to a pragmatic and trusted establishment figure, and that means Chuy has got this if he plays his cards right and gets the ultimate kingmaker's vote, the one and only Willie Wilson's.

Lightfoot is depending heavily on west and south side Black voters to turn out for her in droves this go round, the thought process being that she's the last shot to have a Black mayor for a while given how the population is declining. I wonder if it'll be enough, but I do think Chuy is a really unique threat to her, having both progressive and establishment support. I'll very likely vote for him myself, just like I did in 2015.

I mean the situation remains as it was for a decade: you need two of Hispanic, African American, or North Side Liberals to win. Progressive gentrifiers and conservative ethnic whites are secondary to the big three. Last time Lightfoot and Preckwinkle divided the African American block, but that was all Preckwinkle had so Lightfoot swept via the other groups. Rahm had the North Side and African Americans. If Lightfoot has lost North Side Liberal support, then Chuy is in a very good position.

[Oryxslayer]

Also COVID and its knock-on effects just generally made life awful for local governments everywhere. A harder job, more scrutiny, and no reward - in fact a good chance of surging disapproval over things beyond local control - caused many a Mayor to retire. Those that stayed on didn't exactly weather the storm. 

[Oryxslayer]

Not a Chicago expert, but Vallas only getting 33.8% (which will likely go lower with more VBMs counted I presume) as basically the only conservative in the race seems to bode well for Johnson? In theory, he'd coalesce the Johnson-Lightfoot-Garcia #s at least, right?

I’ve been seeing this take a lot. I’m not sure why people are assuming Lightfoot or Chuy voters would be a lock for Johnson.

I mean we have data in this thread from the map above, and precinct info for those who want to peruse it. The coalitions though are what one expects from block voting.  Which leads to the expectation that if Blick voting continues, Johnson will have Lightfoots African American voters to gain.

People I guess are assuming Chuys vote will go to Johnson because of ideological consistency and past voter behavior for president. That though seems faulty,  mainly cause the Chuy vote was the Block Hispanic vote in most areas. That seems to be the constituency most up for grabs between Valls' White Ethnics and wealthy liberals versus Johnson's African Americans and far northside democrats.

[Oryxslayer]

Do we expect Lightfoot to make an endorsement?

I’d be surprised if she did tbh. I think she hates both of them, and I don’t think either of them will come calling for her nod.

Yeah, I think if a mayor is unpopular enough to face a primary challenge and then lose? I wouldn't want her endorsement, that's for sure.

If anything, each candidate would respond to her hypothetical phone calls telling her to endorse the other. There's also a line of thought that she offers Vallas a foothold in the African American neighborhoods, so maybe he would accept the endorsement. But I still think mutual rejection will keep her on the sidelines.

[Oryxslayer]

Do we have data or estimates of the racial composition of the electorate? Seems Vallas will win whites by a solid but not landslide margin, win Asians in a landslide, and Johnson will win blacks pretty heavily and Hispanics seem to be split but maybe leaning Johnson of Chuys endorsement matters as much as people think. I wonder what percentage of the electorate will fall into those four groups though given a normal level of turnout. Does anybody have any thoughts on this?

Wouldn't be surprised if Vallas does better with Asians than any other racial group (I have no on-the-ground knowledge of Chicago proper), but the Chuy endorsement makes me think it won't be a landslide. Would be curious to see how turnout and percentage margins differ in subordinate-class enclaves versus areas with more upscale and highly educated Asians.

I’m just going off of the first round where Chinatown was one of his best areas.

Yeah but thats just the enclave. You got the same amount in non-Chinatown Downtown/Central areas and nearly 3x as many Asians live across the far North Side - notably south of Lincolnwood.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/capitolfax/status/1638370088934952963?s=20

That should be as close to an endorsement Pritzker will give, which already is unusual. But if Vallas keeps poking the bear the governor will act and kill his campaign.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/jimdaleywrites/status/1638914308779409409?s=20
Here are the full cross tabs. Victory doesn’t have the best track record, but if those Latino #s are correct, that is really impressive. Remember that Vallas was a clear second in Latino wards in the first round with Johnson far behind.

Also impressive in a historical context. The last time there was a Black/Latino coalition vs a white candidate was… Harold Washington?

The further-right candidate only winning a plurality of Latino voters is impressive in a historical context? What would be more typical cleavage for a early 21st century Chicago mayoral election?

I wonder if the dividing line among Hispanic voters will be Mexican vs Other Hispanic Groups, Younger vs Older, or Southwest side vs West/Northwest Side. Cause there are good arguments for each of the three based on how one perceives the Chuy endorsement impacts voters.

[Oryxslayer]

Nice to see Vallas bagging an endorsement from a US Senator. I'll take what I can get.

There was an article out today in relation to this about Durbin and Pritzker feuding over influence and control over the state party  - now that Madigan is gone of course. So if this is cause of what Vallas pushed Pritzker to do, then maybe this pushes Pritzker to formally endorse and put resources behind Johnson.

[Oryxslayer]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/04/04/us/elections/results-chicago-mayor-runoff.html

Results page

paywalled

DDHQ's is also live: https://decisiondeskhq.com/election-results-wisconsin-supreme-court-and-chicago-mayoral-runoff/

[Oryxslayer]

Up quickly to estimated 48% reporting.

Vallas 155,501 - 52.0%
Johnson 143,542 - 48.0%


Johnson still lost that batch comfortably. Will have to turn things around quickly now.

Johnson gained in the votes that were counted very late in the primary, just in case the result is close enough it can't be called.

[Oryxslayer]

Two thirds counted approximately

BRANDON JOHNSON
173,711
48.77%

PAUL VALLAS
182,439
51.23%

Total Votes
356,150

Does anybody know the eligible voter total?

565K was the primary total, so lets start there in total expected voted.

[Oryxslayer]

VALLAS - 182,439 (51.2%)
JOHNSON - 173,711 (48.8%)

57% in, gap has narrowed from 11,000 to 9,000.

57%?

Precincts Reported: 855 of 1,291 (66.23%)

Slow-counted Mail. Which is expected to be very Johnson.

[Oryxslayer]

Now down to 2.4K lead...

[Oryxslayer]

And just like that, a very strong drop for Johnson. If the rest look like that it's very over.

I would rather be Johnson than Vallas. The trendlines look grim...

Then again, we don't know what wards have reported more. You could probably deduce that from the council results.

Yeah. The simplest explanation is that the majority of wards in Chicago are majority-minority for one group or another, Johnson's coalition is mainly PoC + progressives, and  both Africans Americans and Hispanic voters are more likely to go Eday that White Dems. But obviously there will still be regional variations,

[Oryxslayer]

How is Vallas doing in the 19th ward?

Check back at midnight.

[Oryxslayer]

Wait would mail-ins be dominated by White liberals? If so Vallas has a chance.

White lakefront liberals are Johnson's best demographic (were his main demographic in the primary)

Really? Surprising.

The divergence between Lakefront mainstream Dems and Liberal Progressive Dems is key here, and we geographically saw a divergence between the Far North and near North sides. Yes, mail is gonna be made up of more Whites than PoC when compared to other groups, BUT in the primary the Johnson - Vallas gap narrowed by a bit when they got counted. So there must also be self-selection bias at play.

[Oryxslayer]

We should probably expect somewhere a bit above a universe of another 100K votes to count.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/GTCarfree/status/1643470419716894730?s=20

https://twitter.com/Thorongil16/status/1643473974746128385?s=20

We can see that Johnson cleaned up in the African American areas, and Vallas in the White-Ethnic ones and Chinatown. Hispanics though, while clearly going for Vallas overall, were also visibly divided. The Chuy endorsement may have been what made this possible in the end. Every Hispanic area that is Uniformly Hispanic rather than mixed with the Whites who used to dominate them is tight.

Another place we could say Vallas lost the race is in the North Side. There is the Progressive Far Northside / Logan Square vs the more traditional Business Dem northside, but that was expected. This is not a few decades ago when the North was all one Block. However, it seems that Johnson's support in this area has expanded from the first round. If there is anywhere where tying Vallas to Republicans would lose him round 1 voters, or increase Liberal turnout, it would be among the politically informed economically-stable White Liberals.

[Oryxslayer]

By recent standards, this was very racially polarized, but it's still not even close to the elections of the Harold Washington era.

In 1983, Harold Washington got 31,095 votes in the 8th ward, and Bernie Epton got 457, a ratio of 68.1:1.  
In the 41st ward, Washington got 2,380 votes, and Epton got 32,725, a ratio of 13.75:1.
Multiply these two together, and we have our measure of racial polarization (the 8th is monolithically black, the 41st is overwhelmingly white). For 1983, we get a value of 936.

For the following elections, we have
1987: 1472
1989: 1401
1991: 354
1995: 56
1999: 25.6
2003: 4.4
2007: 4.6
2011: 7.7
2015: 1.3
2019: 3.6
2023: 28.3

The highest since 1995, yes. But evaluated this way, it becomes pretty obvious that Chicago is still less tense than the census elections of the 1980s.

By way of a scale, the 2020 Presidential election in Chicago scored a 27.9, the US as a whole is about 15 on this metric. Mississippi is around 100, and Issaquena County, Mississippi is around 250 from Reagent's estimates.

Good post. Here's what that looks like on a map (source), for those wondering. The colors reflecting the intensity of voter support in both the Black neighborhoods and the Vallas White ones are much less intense than decades ago, and that's ignoring how the Hispanic (formerly White) areas split down the middle. Vallas had black support thanks to the Wilson and Alderman endorsements, as well as Conservative/Safety motived voters. The cities white vote today is a lot more Liberal Democratic than it was in the late 20th century, so Johnson has support even outside of the Progressive parts of the North Side.

[Oryxslayer]

Good post. Here's what that looks like on a map (source), for those wondering. The colors reflecting the intensity of voter support in both the Black neighborhoods and the Vallas White ones are much less intense than decades ago, and that's ignoring how the Hispanic (formerly White) areas split down the middle. Vallas had black support thanks to the Wilson and Alderman endorsements, as well as Conservative/Safety motived voters. The cities white vote today is a lot more Liberal Democratic than it was in the late 20th century, so Johnson has support even outside of the Progressive parts of the North Side.

I know not all of the votes have been counted yet, but just look at that >50% decline in raw turnout over 40 years. Chicago’s population only decreased by ~10% between the 1980 and 2020 censuses.

I mean yeah the salience of local politics has decreased with nationalization. But another thing that shouldn't be discounted - arguably it is the most imperative factor - is that increased polarization correlates almost perfectly with an increase in 'cheap' political action. Cheap here is defined by political behavior papers as something that requires limited action when compared to say a protest, petition, or membership in an activist organization, and voting is the classic example. In such a racially polarized and tense election, of course turnout would surge.