2023 Chicago Mayoral/Aldermanic Elections

[Sestak]

The guy got less than half percent. So I'm not sure this is a game changer.

Even discounting that he was a candidate, a black south side alderman is still a major get. Especially since, as noted upthread, Johnson at minimum needs to keep the black vote fairly strongly on his side to even have a chance at competing in the runoff.

[Sestak]

The Vallas-is-a-Republican posters really need to reckon with the fact that the last two mayors before Lightfoot were Rahm, who pushed CTU to its first strike in a quarter-century, and M. Daley, who took control of CPS and replaced dozens of schools with charters (as part of his general project of stripping the copper out of city government). Vallas's record on education is what it is, but it's Chicago Democrats who have been the architects of privatization and charterization in Chicago schools (and Vallas who was hand-selected by M. Daley to organize much of that!). Haven't seen much to suggest Vallas would be too different from those two.

It sounds like both of them were awful too. Just because they claimed they were Democrats doesn't mean they actually did mainstream-Democrat things. Same with Vallas; what has he actually proposed that is mainstream Democrat at this point? Everything you see about him screams that he's *technically* a Democrat, but a very, very, very conservative one at that - and for a city like Chicago, that sounds terrible.

Sure, but for a city like Chicago, that’s also standard. It should not be surprising that establishment Democrats in the state are backing someone who - in their minds - is likely to govern the city in the same manner as Barack Obama’s ex-chief of staff.

[Sestak]

538 preview: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/chicago-wisconsin-elections/

Someone got paid to write this. My God. Worst political writing about the city I've ever seen.

The worst political writing about the city, so far.

[Sestak]

Estimated 18% reporting:

Vallas 59,178 - 52.9%
Johnson 52,680 - 47.1%


@Taniel on Twitter claims the gap after the inital results narrowed by 6 points against Vallas in the primary. Could be looking at a real close one here if that holds again today.

[Sestak]

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.

[Sestak]

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

[Sestak]

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%)

NYT is doing an estimate of the vote reported, rather than precincts; they think 57%. Could have to do with outstanding mail.

[Sestak]

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...

Dunno if I could say anything that concrete; it's hard to tell if the trendline means anything when there is no geographic data attached.

[Sestak]

WHOA

[Sestak]

Yeah ok, no, Johnson just might win this thing right now.

[Sestak]

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)

[Sestak]

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.

'lakefront liberals' is a very crude way of referring to the demographic I'm talking about, but genuinely liberal whites (as opposed to, e.g., suburbanites) bade up the primary backbone of his campaign. This is not unique; Lightfoot four years ago had the same base in the primary while Preckwinkle and Wilson were the "black candidates"; Lightfoot herself took on this role in the primary while Johnson won most of Lightfoot's 2019 base areas.

[Sestak]

Not sure if mentioned already but NYT/AP have dropped the check mark here.