On Tuesday, Democrats swept into federal, state and local office in Illinois and across the country, and took back control of the U.S. House.

In Illinois, the Republican candidate for governor lost worse than he did the first time. Republicans lost seats in the suburbs that were supposed to be safe. The three Illinois Republicans in Congress on this site all won. And one of them won a fourth term a month after telling a room full of local officials that Islam "is not a religion."

Here's the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good: Bailey lost again, by more

Darren Bailey ran for governor against JB Pritzker in 2022 and lost by nearly 13 percentage points. He ran again this year. The Associated Press called the race for Pritzker within a minute of the polls closing, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

With about 96% of the expected vote counted, Pritzker had 60.1% and Bailey had 36.6%, according to NBC News. Independent Collin Corbett got 3.4%. Four years ago, Bailey got 42.3%.

Pritzker will be the first Democrat elected to a third term as governor of Illinois. He paid for it himself: his self-funded campaign spent more than $90 million, the Sun-Times reported, and blanketed the airwaves and the internet with ads painting Bailey as a lackey of Trump. From July through September, Pritzker's campaign spent nearly $24 million and Bailey's spent less than $1 million, according to CBS News Chicago.

Bailey tried to keep the race on the cost of living, crime and schools, and pledged to cut property taxes. The Sun-Times noted that critics tie the cost of living to Trump's tariffs and the Iran war, and that Chicago saw a historic drop in homicides this year. At his election-night party at an Effingham hotel, in front of several dozen supporters, he acknowledged the loss. "The people are speaking, and it just confounds us," he said.

It shouldn't have. This is the candidate who, ninety minutes after the Highland Park parade shooting, told his Facebook followers "let's move on and let's celebrate". He spent this campaign living in a downtown Chicago apartment he said a doctor had donated, and wouldn't say who owned it or what the rent was.

Republicans also lost the U.S. Senate race. Juliana Stratton beat former Illinois Republican Party chairman Don Tracy 61.3% to 37.1% for Dick Durbin's open seat. Democrats held every statewide office.

The suburbs

Democrats already had supermajorities in both chambers of the Illinois Legislature. On Tuesday they grew them, winning seats that had long been considered safely Republican, according to Capitol News Illinois. As of Wednesday morning, with some races still uncalled, Democrats held 44 of the 59 Senate seats, up from 40, and 80 House seats, up from 78. Capitol News Illinois said the totals could grow as high as 46 in the Senate and 85 in the House.

Some of the races:

• Barrington. In the state Senate, Democratic Rep. Nabeela Syed beat Republican Sen. Darby Hills by about 14 points. In the state House, Democrat Maria Peterson beat Republican Rep. Martin McLaughlin by more than 11 points — the same two candidates who were 47 votes apart in 2024.
• Bartlett. Moderate Republican Sen. Seth Lewis lost to Democrat Ben McAdams by more than 9 points. "I believe (voters) were thinking about Donald Trump and the White House," Lewis told the Daily Herald.
• Hanover Park. Democrat Amanda Zahorak ousted Republican Rep. Jennifer Sanalitro, who won the seat by nearly 16 points two years ago.
• Geneva. Assistant Minority Leader Dan Ugaste, one of the House Republicans' leaders, lost to Democrat Ricky Rivard.
• The Metro East. Republican Sen. Erica Harriss trailed Democrat Marsia Geldert-Murphey by nearly 6 points.

The wave reached county government, too. In McHenry County, long a Republican stronghold, voters picked Pritzker over Bailey 53% to 42%, a reversal from 2022, according to the Daily Herald. The county's clerk, Joseph Tirio, a staunch Trump supporter, lost, according to preliminary results. DuPage County's board will be 17 Democrats and one Republican. A decade ago it was the other way around: 17 Republicans and one Democrat.

"The suburbs said, 'This is not us,'" College of DuPage political scientist Melissa Mouritsen told the Daily Herald.

In Chicago, 84.9% of voters backed a ballot question asking the city to seek compensation from the federal government for the costs and harm of Operation Midway Blitz, the federal immigration enforcement campaign in the city last year.

This matters because of what's coming. The budget bill that Mike Bost, Darin LaHood and Mary Miller voted for cuts Medicaid by close to $1 trillion, and its work requirements are slated to kick in next year. The day after the election, Pritzker said his next term would include trying to "restore food aid to people, and Medicaid". The Legislature he'll be working with just got more Democratic.

The bad: they won, by less

All three Illinois Republicans in Congress on this site won. Bost and Miller did worse than the last time a Democrat ran against them, and LaHood had to face a Democrat for the first time since 2022.

• Mike Bost won a seventh term in southern Illinois with 69.7% against Democrat Julie Fortier, a first-time congressional candidate, with 98% of the expected vote counted. Two years ago he got 74.2%. Bost refused to debate Fortier and won't hold an in-person town hall. His reason for skipping the debate: it would only reach a "small audience."
• Darin LaHood won a seventh term in north-central Illinois with 58.8% against Democrat Paul Nolley, with 94% counted. In 2024 he had no opponent at all. He has defended his six "no" votes on ending U.S. involvement in the Iran war; he said the measure was largely symbolic and that he wants Trump to wind the war down. Last spring he told Peoria radio we needed an "off ramp" from that war, then voted against one four weeks later.
• Mary Miller won a fourth term with 66.9%. More on her below.

The ugly: Mary Miller

Mary Miller represents Illinois' 15th District, a horseshoe-shaped district that wraps around the Democratic-leaning 13th, which runs from East St. Louis to Champaign-Urbana. Until this year, she hadn't faced a general-election challenger since 2022, according to St. Louis Public Radio. In 2024 she was the only name on the ballot.

What she said

Last month, Miller gave a speech at a Republican fall banquet in Hancock County. Nobody asked her about Islam. She brought it up herself, naming it one of her three biggest worries for the country, and said:

"Islam is not a religion. It is a form of government that is incompatible with our form of government."

The crowd burst into applause.

She told the room — local party members, county officials, law enforcement, school board members — "They are not at the gate. They are inside the gate," and "when they build a mosque, in their mind, they have just conquered that area."

It wasn't new for her. On January 5, 2021, the day before the attack on the Capitol, Miller told a rally outside it that "Hitler was right on one thing." She apologized three days later.

And on October 30, four days before the election, she led 44 House Republicans in a letter asking the Trump administration to leave every noncitizen — green card holders and refugees included — out of the count that divides up seats in the House. The Constitution says to count "the whole number of persons."

What she ran on

Miller centered her campaign on supporting Trump's platform across the board, St. Louis Public Radio reported, including his fight against "gender ideology" in schools and his push to arrest and deport more people. She did not respond to the station's interview requests to talk about the race.

Her opponent, Democrat Jennifer Todd, is a nurse from Edwardsville. She ran on the cost of health care and the Medicaid work requirements coming next year, and on how much rural hospitals depend on Medicaid to keep their doors open. She said she'd vote to rein in Trump's tariffs and the Iran war, which she said is putting an unnecessary cost on farmers.

What it was worth on Tuesday

With about 98% of the expected vote counted, Miller had 66.9% to Todd's 33.1%, according to NBC News. That's a margin of about 34 points. In her last contested race, in 2022, she won by 42.

So Todd cut Miller's margin. But a member of Congress who told a Republican banquet that Islam is not a religion, and who once said Hitler was right about something, still won by about 34 points — and goes back to Washington for two more years.

One more thing: federal poll monitors

The Justice Department sent more than 1,000 poll monitors across the country on Election Day, with a specific focus on Chicago and suburban Cook County, and called it the "largest monitoring effort in history." Pritzker said he hadn't seen problems, but added, "we're always concerned about Donald Trump interfering with elections." CBS News Chicago went looking for the 10 monitors assigned to Cook County polling places and didn't find any of them.

What the results show

Darren Bailey lost the governor's race to JB Pritzker for the second time, with 36.6% of the vote, down from 42.3% in 2022. Democrats gained at least four state Senate seats and two state House seats as of Wednesday morning, beating Republican incumbents in Barrington, Bartlett, Hanover Park and Geneva, and 84.9% of Chicago voters backed asking the federal government to pay for the harm of Operation Midway Blitz. Mike Bost and Mary Miller won by less than in their last contested races, Darin LaHood got 58.8% after running unopposed in 2024 — and Miller won by about 34 points a month after telling a Republican banquet that Islam "is not a religion."

Source

Democrats sweep statewide races, expand already-historic supermajorities — Jerry Nowicki, Capitol News Illinois, November 4, 2026.