Voter turnout in Cook County "looks good" so far this Election Day. A County Board of Elections spokeswoman said that roughly half of registered voters have turned out in midterm elections over the past 20 years, and there's been an increased interest in absentee and early voting. more ›

Remember how we lamented the low voter turnout in last week's primary elections? It seems last weeks low turnout was a new record low for a non-presidential primary. The CNC reports that the final turnout came in at 27.2 percent, beating the previous record low of 29.14 percent in 1958. James Warren laments more on this figure here. more ›

Langdon Neal, chairman of the Chicago Board of Elections, told the press last night, "We are headed for very low turnout today, we'll be lucky to get 30 percent." He also indicated that it could be below 24 percent, which he said, "would be embarrassing." As of this post, Neal can breathe a small sigh of relief as the Board of Elections is reporting a turnout of around 26 percent. Not that that's really any better. Democrats made up 90.7 percent of the city's vote, Republicans made up 8.8 percent, and Green party voters the final half percent. If these numbers hold, that means 74 percent of city voters don't get to complain about last night's results. more ›

As the monumental achievement of Tuesday night sinks in, we now can get reflective about what happened. And our friends over at The Windy Citizen have taken that one step further with an excellent look at Chicagoans' motivation for voting with their "Why I Voted" project. They spoke to 22 people from Evanston, Hyde Park, and the Loop as they cast their ballots to get their feelings on why they voted in this historic election. Stop by and take a gander at the results. more ›

MSNBC is reporting that close to 137 million Americans, a turnout of 64.1 percent, cast ballots in this historic election, the highest total since 1908. more ›

With reports of long lines all around the area, it seemed we were heading for a record turnout. Did that pan out? Not quite, according to Cook County Clerk David Orr, who estimated Cook County turnout would be just below 80 percent. "We're still going to have a big turnout but I don't think we're going to make 80 percent." However, in spite of this, the total number of voters in Illinois casting ballots did hit a record high with an estimate of 5.7 million. Still, why the overestimation of turnout? Spokesman for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioner James Allen pointed to the early rush, saying, "I call it the Rally Effect...Either they wanted to avoid the tangle of traffic or they wanted to go...After that big morning rush, we expected a supersized turnout. But after after 3 o'clock, instead of getting busier and busier the polls got deader and deader." What about national turnout? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 126 million people voted in the 2004 Kerry-Bush Presidential election. As of 9:50 a.m. this morning, MSNBC had 118,694,407 voters casting ballots for the two major party candidates (with 97 percent reporting). That doesn't include votes cast for third party or independent candidates. more ›