Fox Valley voters came out to the polls on Tuesday for the March 17 primary election, with some local election authorities touting turnout numbers on par with or higher than some recent primary contests as of the afternoon on Election Day.
Election stories can be found at aurorabeaconnews.com and will be running in the Thursday print edition of The Beacon-News.
In Tuesday’s election, Illinois residents cast their votes for their preferred party’s candidates for federal- and state-level races in advance of the November general election — among them a contentious primary to determine the successor to Illinois’ senior senator Dick Durbin, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, and a face-off of Republican candidates to challenge Gov. JB Pritzker in November.
Voters also had the opportunity to weigh in on some local races.
In Kane County, for example, residents are deciding who the Democratic and Republican nominees should be for positions like county sheriff, treasurer and clerk, as well as for those members of the county board that are up for reelection in 2026.
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and Will counties also have contested countywide races on Tuesday’s ballot.And some voters in Kane and Kendall were also asked to weigh in on two major bond questions: one that would enable Geneva to build a new police station, and another that would pay for new facilities for Yorkville School District 115.
Kane County had seen 18,336 votes cast on Election Day as of around 2:40 p.m. on Tuesday, Kane County Clerk John Cunningham said over the phone — almost 11,000 of those Democratic ballots, and a little over 7,000 Republican. In addition to 19,271 ballots cast early at in-person polling locations and 13,324 ballots received so far by mail, the county had topped 50,000 votes and counting on Tuesday afternoon, according to the numbers provided by Cunningham.
That means that, of the county’s 295,781 actively registered voters, around 17% had cast their votes in the election as of Tuesday afternoon.
In a phone call Tuesday, Cunningham said that rates of early voting and mail-in voting this year are outpacing 2022’s primary numbers, but indicated that it was too early to tell for day-of turnout.
In the 2022 primary, Kane County’s overall turnout was a little under 19%, according to numbers from the Clerk’s Office. Turnout in the county for the 2024 general primary was around 15%.
Kendall County had seen 7,678 ballots cast in-person on Tuesday as of a little after 3 p.m. on Election Day, according to Kendall County Clerk Debbie Gillette. With 105,000 registered voters, turnout so far for the election was around 10% as of Tuesday afternoon, she said, including in-person voting on Tuesday as well as early voting and mail-in ballots.
In 2022, Kendall County saw a total turnout rate of 21.5%, and in 2018 saw just over 21% of registered voters casting their ballots, according to Gillette.
In DuPage County, 115,069 votes had been cast in the election as of 2 p.m. on Tuesday, a news release from DuPage County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek indicated. With 636,822 registered voters, the turnout rate was roughly 18% as of Tuesday afternoon.
Of those, 41,212 voters had voted early in-person, per the DuPage County Clerk’s Office, while 35,966 mail-in ballots had been received and verified. The remaining 37,891 votes had been cast in-person on Election Day as of 2 p.m.
Kaczmarek also indicated that the office had been seeing higher turnout than usual.
“Election Day voting by hour has been trending higher all day than comparable past elections,” Kaczmarek said in the news release. “DuPage County is on pace for its highest midterm turnout in recent memory.”
In the 2022 primary, DuPage’s final turnout rate was a little under 23%, and was just under 25% in 2018, according to the Clerk’s Office.
And Will County was up to 32,480 votes cast on Election Day as of around 3 p.m., according to numbers provided by the Will County Clerk’s Office.
The county was up to 64,396 ballots cast in total as of Tuesday afternoon, counting early in-person votes and mail-in ballots — meaning about 14% of the county’s 458,788 registered voters had cast their votes as of Tuesday afternoon. The Clerk’s Office indicated that these numbers are on par with other primary elections in the county.