Illinois elections in 2026
19 electoral votes · 17 House seats · Midwest · 2 statewide races on the 2026 ballot
Illinois US Senate: D 55.4 to R 42.1, safe Democratic, well sourced. Juliana Stratton makes history with Black women in the Senate
Illinois Governor: D 60.0 to R 40.0, safe Democratic, well sourced. JB Pritzker Wins Rare Third Term as Governor Defeating Darren Bailey in Rematch
House delegation as simulated: 14 D, 3 R, 0 tossups of 17 districts swept.
Model readings of live reporting, not polling. The full Illinois board, with sourcing and the county map where one exists, is on the Midterms 2026 tab of the homepage.
How Illinois votes
Illinois is dominated by Chicago and its collar counties, balanced against a large downstate region with different economics and politics. Democrats hold a firm statewide advantage, while taxes, pensions and public safety drive much of the argument.
Its largest population centers include Chicago, Rockford, Peoria, Springfield. Where a state's people live, and what those places do for a living, is the starting point for how Electorate HQ simulations reason about it.
On the ballot in Illinois
Election day is November 3, 2026. Illinois has 2 statewide races and 17 House seats on the ballot.
Statewide races
House districts
Every House seat is elected every two years. Each district below is listed with the counties inside it, computed from the current Census boundary files, wherever those files give a clean answer. Not sure which district is yours? Use the address lookup below.
- Illinois 1st district: Will County
- Illinois 2nd district: Ford, Iroquois, Kankakee, Livingston, Vermilion Counties
- Illinois 3rd district: entirely within DuPage County
- Illinois 4th district: Cook County
- Illinois 5th district: entirely within Cook County
- Illinois 6th district: DuPage County
- Illinois 7th district: entirely within Cook County
- Illinois 8th district: entirely within Cook County
- Illinois 9th district: entirely within Cook County
- Illinois 10th district: Lake County
- Illinois 11th district: Kane, McHenry Counties
- Illinois 12th district: Alexander, Clark, Clay, Clinton, Crawford, Cumberland, Edwards, Effingham and 25 more counties (33 in all)
- Illinois 13th district: Champaign, Macon, Macoupin, Piatt, Sangamon Counties
- Illinois 14th district: DeKalb, Kendall, LaSalle, Putnam Counties
- Illinois 15th district: Adams, Bond, Brown, Calhoun, Cass, Christian, Coles, De Witt and 20 more counties (28 in all)
- Illinois 16th district: Boone, Bureau, Grundy, Henry, Jo Daviess, Lee, Marshall, McLean and 6 more counties (14 in all)
- Illinois 17th district: Carroll, Fulton, Knox, McDonough, Rock Island, Stephenson, Whiteside Counties
Find your exact districts
Your address goes to the U.S. Census Bureau's public geocoder to find your districts. It is not stored, and no AI sees it.
Which district am I in? Illinois districts by county
House districts follow population, not county lines, so a single county can hold several districts and a single district can span many. Each county is listed under the district that holds its center, so if your county appears once above, that district holds most of it and is probably yours. If it appears under several, or if you live near a district line, use the address lookup for the exact answer.
Before you vote in Illinois
Registration deadlines, early voting windows, mail ballot rules and identification requirements are all set at the state level and change between cycles, so the authoritative source is your own election office rather than any national site. The federal directory at vote.gov links to every state's registration system, and your county election office publishes the sample ballot that includes local contests.
The ballot section above covers the federal and statewide offices on the Illinois ballot for November 3, 2026. Each statewide race links to a page with current coverage and an AI-generated simulation of the contest, always labeled as a simulation rather than a poll.
Local races
Local councils and commissions, school boards, judges, sheriffs and municipal offices are also on many Illinois ballots, and they vary block by block. Your county election office publishes the authoritative local sample ballot.
Illinois's weight in Washington
Illinois carries 19 electoral votes, which ranks it 5 of 51 by that measure, and sends 17 voting members to the House.
That arithmetic is why the same national argument lands differently here than in a state of another size: a candidate courting Illinois is competing for a specific share of the map, and the issues below are the ones that share actually turns on.
How Illinois is represented
Illinois is divided into 17 House districts, each drawn to hold roughly the same number of people, while its two Senate seats represent the state as a whole. A campaign here therefore runs two different arguments at once: a local one shaped by whichever district a voter lives in, and a statewide one that has to hold together across all 17.
Electoral votes follow the same arithmetic, House seats plus two, which is why Illinois carries 19 in a presidential year and why small states carry proportionally more weight there than population alone would give them. The district list above shows every district on the 2026 ballot and the counties the boundary files place inside each one.
Issues that weigh heavily in Illinois
Based on the state's industry mix, geography and cost of living, these issues tend to carry structural weight in Illinois elections:
Latest Illinois political headlines
JB Pritzker says his reelection as Illinois governor shows hope is winning out over fearIllinois election results: U.S. Senate, governor and congressional races2026 Election Day news: JB Pritzker defeats Darren Bailey in Illinois governor race rematch, ABC News projectsWho is winning the governor race in Illinois? See latest live resultsWhat's it like running as an independent candidate for governor in Illinois? Podcaster Collin Corbett weighs in.Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker beats Darren Bailey for 3rd term, leaving one question: Will he run for president?Illinois Governor Race: Independent Candidate Collin Corbett on Policy, Healthcare, and TaxesThe Illinois state report card is out. Here are 3 data trends worth a closer look.Simulate Illinois
In the Electorate HQ simulator, Illinois is one of 51 delegations that reads current reporting and decides a presidential race issue by issue. Results are AI simulations, clearly labeled, with the reasoning shown for every call. See the methodology for what that does and does not mean.
Analysis covering Illinois
Ten whole congressional districts fit inside Los Angeles County
Seventy-nine of the 435 districts sit entirely within a single county. Ten of them are in one county in California.
Twenty-six states elect a senator and a governor on the same day in 2026
The overlap between the Senate class and the gubernatorial cohort is a coincidence of two unrelated calendars, and it decides where money goes.
The 2026 Senate map covers 62% of the country and 70% of the states
Thirty-five of fifty states vote for Senate this year. Weighted by people rather than states the share drops, and that gap is the design of the chamber.