As polling stretched on into the afternoon, turnout in Tuesday’s consolidated election across DuPage and Will counties was on par with expectations, local election officials said.
As of 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, DuPage County was sitting at 16.3% turnout out of a total 626,499 registered voters, with 27,128 casting their ballots on election day so far, according to DuPage County Chief Deputy Clerk Adam Johnson.
Though it’s difficult to know what to expect out of turnout, it looks as though DuPage is on pace to “be pretty close if not slightly higher than the overall turnout in 2023,” Johnson said in a call. Just over 20% of the county’s registered voters participated in the last consolidated election.
Also reached by phone Tuesday afternoon, Will County Clerk Annette Parker didn’t yet have any election day turnout numbers to report, saying “we’ll start seeing how many people came out today” later in the evening. However, Parker did say, “I think what we are hearing and what we’re feeling is typical for a consolidated election.” In recent years, Will County turnout for consolidated elections has been about 16.6 to 16.7%.
On the ballot for Naperville voters are several contested races, including an eight-person race for four, four-year terms on the Naperville City Council, a five-way race for four Naperville District 203 School Board seats and a six-way race for four open seats on the Naperville Park Board.
While overall turnout may reflect years past, election officials are keeping an eye on how those numbers break down by voting method, they say.
Ahead of Tuesday, DuPage County saw 42,556 ballots cast through in-person early voting. That’s nearly double the number of in person early voters that turned out across the county in 2023, according to Johnson. Meanwhile, the county’s tally of mail-in ballots was up to 32,195 as of election day. Two years ago, the county received a total of 40,842 ballots by mail.
Speaking to voters choosing to go to the polls early or cast ballots by mail, Johnson said, “As people become used to those options, it becomes part of their voting routine more and more every election.”
Will County going into Tuesday had 15,119 ballots returned by mail and 17,192 ballots cast through in-person early voting out of 453,563 registered voters, according to clerk’s office data.
Two years ago, Will County saw a return of 75,686 ballots among 454,714 registered voters at the time, a 16.6% turnout. Of those, 19,600 were cast by mail and 14,057 were cast through in-person early voting.
In 2021, which included the same offices up for election this year, 16.74% of Will County voters turned out to cast their ballots, with 14,665 of those cast by mail and 13,606 cast early in-person.
Parker said she’s waiting to see how election day participation pans out this year to see if voters are trending more towards voting early nowadays.
“Maybe … people aren’t waiting until the day-of anymore,” she said. “But we will see.”
Unofficial results from this year’s consolidated election will be available on the Naperville Sun website Wednesday and in print Friday.
