This Primary Set Early Voter Turnout Records For Chicago

By Mae Rice in News on Mar 15, 2016 7:45PM

If early voting is any indication, this is going to be a record-breaking primary in Chicago. Local voters cast a historic number of early primary votes: 129,957 of them as of 3:45 p.m. on Sunday.

This beats the 2008 primary's record by roughly 60 percent. That year, when President Barack Obama ran against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, Chicagoans cast 81,690 early ballots in the presidential primary.

This year, primary votes were cast at 51 early voting sites open in Chicago since the end of February. However, just 14 of those locations took votes this past Sunday and Monday—so tallying numbers on Sunday doesn't feel totally premature.

To complement our early voting record, Chicago has also set a record for pure voter registration this year: Cook County Clerk David Orr told the Tribune that 1,443,261 voters are registered for the 2016 primary, a record for any presidential election.

For ongoing updates on the Illinois primary, follow our live-blog, which we’ll be updating until the polls close at 7 p.m. Tuesday.