CHICAGO — The city that catapulted Lori Lightfoot into office in 2019 came to the polls in smaller numbers in 2023 to send her home.
Election Day saw 507,852 ballots cast for a turnout of 32.1 percent for the city, according to the election board. The first round of the city’s 2019 municipal election saw 35.5 percent citywide turnout, with 560,701 ballots cast.
But an explosion in vote-by-mail ballots this election cycle means there are still 99,000 mailed ballots to be accounted for, election board spokesperson Max Bever said. Ballots received in the mail Election Day or later will start being counted Wednesday morning, Bever said. Some of those 99,000 ballots might have been mailed while others were not, Bever said.
After a sluggish start to Election Day, vote totals rebounded in the evening hours, with more than 20,000 votes cast each hour after 3 p.m., according to the elections board.
Older voters drove the vote, with 31.5 percent of ballots cast coming from people 65 years or older, compared to 17 percent of the vote from people 35 years and younger. The city’s oldest voters came to the polls at comparable clips to 2019.
The most-watched race of the night was the mayoral contest: Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson got the most votes and are headed to the April 4 runoff. Lightfoot conceded the race.