Here are the Chicago counties that voted for Trump, increasing from 2016 to 2024

The presidential election for the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois showed Donald Trump making gains in this deep blue city and state, marking his best result in his three election cycles on Tuesday.

Whether this is a trend with implications for city and state politics remains to be seen.

In Chicago, according to unofficial results, Trump rose to 22.01% of the city vote in 2024, up from 12.41% of the city vote in 2016. The 41st District, in the city’s far northwest corner, is the only one where Trump won more than that on Tuesday won half of the votes.

In Illinois, Trump’s statewide vote increased to 45.3% this year, compared to 38.76% in 2016, unofficial polls show.

For now, the returns of Chicago and Illinois for Trump — the former and future president — tell the story of a slowly growing GOP vote in cities and states. However, the state’s 19 Electoral College votes still went to Vice President Kamala Harris, who urged Trump to concede on Wednesday.

Trump’s popularity in Illinois

According to unofficial figures from the New York Times, Trump outperformed all Republicans running for president in Illinois since 1992.

Every Democrat has won Illinois since 1992, with the top vote-getter during that period being favorite son Barack Obama.

The statistics: With 93% of responses counted as of Wednesday afternoon, the tally was 53.3% for Harris and 45.3% for Trump.

Trump’s popularity in Chicago

In the last three elections, voters in the same handful of predominantly white precincts in Chicago gave more than a quarter of their votes to Trump. Tuesday was Trump’s peak.

Since this was the third time Trump was on the ballot, we have a story to work with.

In 2016the GOP party of Trump and Mike Pence received 12.41% of the vote in Chicago, compared to the Democratic candidacy of Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, which received 83.73% of the vote in the city’s 50 wards.

In 2020the Trump-Pence ticket improved, receiving 15.83% of the vote to 82.52% for Joe Biden and Harris.

And clean 2024In 1,251 of the city’s 1,291 precincts, the Trump-JD-Vance ticket received 22.01% of the vote. Harris-Tim Walz won 76.79%.

Because Chicago remains a highly segregated city, community returns can be disaggregated by race and ethnicity.

In the last three elections, voters in the same handful of predominantly white counties gave Trump the most support. Voters in majority-black counties in the South and West overwhelmingly supported Democrats.

In 2020, there were 15 majority-Black counties where more than 90% voted for Biden. As of Tuesday, there were only seven majority-black counties where more than 90% voted for Harris.

Trump won votes in Far North Side counties that are home to Orthodox Jewish voters, particularly the 50th District. While most Jews in the US tend to be liberal/progressive Democrats, Orthodox Jews, who are more politically conservative, tend to be Republicans. And this year’s elections came at a time when the war between Israel and Hamas has been raging for more than a year and anti-Semitism has been on the rise.

For some Trump voters in Chicago, the Oct. 26 shooting of a 39-year-old man on his way to a synagogue in West Ridge by a man charged with attempted murder and a hate crime likely only strengthened their decision.

Contributor: WBEZ’s Alden Loury.