Voter turnout dipped nationally this election cycle, but it appears there were slight gains in some northern Illinois counties.
WNIJ took a closer look at turnout in DeKalb, LaSalle, and Winnebago counties compared with 2012.
According to unofficial results from county clerk data and figures from the State Board of Elections, voter turnout for DeKalb County topped 72% in 2016 between front runners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump compared with 71% in the match-up against then-incumbent Barack Obama and challenger Republican Mitt Romney.
A spokesperson for DeKalb County says the office is still entering grace period registrations, which will increase the number of registered voters, which in turn will bring the 2016 percentage down a little. The office expects turnout between 2012 and 2016 will be "very close" by the time everything is tabulated.
Results will not be official until Nov. 28.
For LaSalle County, more than 70% of registered voters cast ballots in 2016 compared with 66% in 2012, according to unofficial results.
In Winnebago County, turnout just for the city of Rockford was down slightly from the 2012 presidential race.
Stacey Bixby is the executive director of the Rockford Board of Election Commissioners. Even though her office noted a slight decrease in turnout for the city from 2012, she notes early voting was up this year.
She says early voting nearly doubled from 2012—to 14,028 in 2016.
Bixby theorizes some of those voters may have been mobilized by increased social media marketing.
“Facebook itself made an unbelievable marketing push to get out and vote and early vote. They did that several times,” Bixby said.
She also says some voters thought turnout was going to be higher on Election Day.
“I think people were afraid that they were going to have to wait in line at the polling places for long periods of time. That may have contributed to why we had a lot more people voting early.”
Northern Illinois University’s Matt Streb says now it's time for political scientists, like himself, to analyze the campaigns and their outcomes. On election night, he told WNIJ he was surprised by the combative nature of the 2016 presidential election.
“I don’t ever recall a presidential election being so less about substantive policy issues than this one. Healthcare kind of came up--Obamacare. But for the most part it was about e-mails, it was about sexual assault, and it was about temperament and things that weren’t what you usually normally think of when we think of presidential elections.”
Hillary Clinton carried Illinois overall, but a breakdown of county returns shows Trump won in LaSalle County.
For the U.S. Senate race between incumbent Mark Kirk and Tammy Duckworth, there was not consensus among the three counties. Duckworth earn the spot statewide. At the county level, she claimed DeKalb County, but lost in LaSalle and Winnebago.
For comparison, the political party breakdown in LaSalle County in 2012 was nearly neck and neck between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, Obama easily carried DeKalb and Winnebago counties that year.
Votes for third party contenders were higher in 2016 compared with 2012. For example, fewer than 1,000 ballots cast in DeKalb County in 2012 went to candidates outside of the two major parties. For 2016, more than 4,000 votes went to challengers outside of Clinton and Trump.
There were more than 8,500 votes for third party candidates in Winnebago County this fall.
