Presidential primary post-election report

Friday, March 28, 2008

The February 5, 2008 Presidential Primary Election included a number of hard-fought contests in Cook County. This post-election report will give you an opportunity to mull over some of the results and give you a snapshot of political trends in today’s suburbs. For example:

Turnout reached 43 percent, the highest turnout in suburban Cook in 20 years. At 59 percent, Oak Park Township had the highest turnout.

• Final results include more than 51,000 Early Voting ballots, 1,300 provisional ballots and 9,000 absentee ballots.

• Voterinfonet.com, our Web site for election information and results, logged 4.8 million hits from 51,587 users on Election Day.

• About 62 percent of voters used touch screens to cast ballots on Election Day.

• All but three voters at Northwestern University precincts used touch screens.

• More than 1,100 voters turned out at Bloom Township precinct 57 at Marya Yates School in Matteson, the precinct with the most registered voters in suburban Cook.

• About 76 percent of voters voted Democratic ballots and 23 percent voted Republican, with the rest voting non-partisan or Green Party ballots. In 2004, 69 percent of people took Democratic ballots and 29 percent Republican. This was the first primary election in Illinois history for which voters had the option of choosing a Green ballot.

• On the Democratic ballot, Barack Obama won 21 of 30 suburban Cook County townships. Bremen, Evanston, Proviso, Rich and Thornton townships each cast more than 15,000 votes for Obama.

• John McCain swept suburban Cook County townships thanks in part to continued support from New Trier, Northfield and Evanston townships – his strongest supporters during the 2000 presidential primary.

• Wheeling Township cast more than 12,000 Republican ballots, more than any other township in suburban Cook County. Barrington Township is the only township that voted majority Republican.

  
  
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