Trump's Vote Tally In Suburban Cook County Was Historically Bad

By Stephen Gossett in News on Dec 20, 2016 6:39PM

Getty Images / Photo: Alex Wong

It may be cold comfort now to what the numbers say are the majority of area voters, but a recent Cook County election postmortem shows that Chicago's anti-Trump/pro-Clinton leanings extended well and deep into immediately surrounding areas. Hillary Clinton performed historically well in suburban Cook county and, so it follows, Donald Trump fared historically poor in the same arena, according to figures released last week by Cook County Clerk David Orr.

Trump’s 317,970 votes represent the lowest total—either Republican or Democrat—in modern suburban Cook County history, Orr noted in the analysis. Clinton more than doubled that figure, with 699,003, the highest vote count for a presidential candidate in suburban Cook County history. (Previous record holder—you guessed it—Barack Obama collected 845 votes fewer.)

Within the city of Chicago, Clinton’s 912,000 votes surpassed Obama’s 2012 number (853,000) but fell short of his 2008 share (930,000). More ballots were cast in both Chicago and the suburbs than at any point since 1992, Orr found. Voter turnout reached 71 percent in the city and 71.5 in the suburbs. Oak Park notably registered a whopping 83.4 percent turnout.

It was a banner year for the early birds, too. "Early Voting reached historic levels with 360,383 early votes cast - a 57.6 percent increase from the 2012 Presidential Election," Orr noted in the report.

The full findings are now available online here.