Election 2024: Illinois could see voter turnout reach 68%, miss 2020 record of 73%

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) — The Illinois State Board of Elections expects to see a final voter turnout of 68% for the 2024 presidential election. A significant amount of Illinoisans chose to vote early rather than wait in line on Election Day.

Illinois broke a record in 2020 with 73% of registered voters casting ballots. While state leaders say it's unlikely we'll see that number this year, there is a lot of optimism from early voting.

"We had about 2.7 million votes cast before Election Day," ISBE spokesperson Matt Dietrich said Wednesday. "That's a record for a non-pandemic year. 2020 was an outlier. We had well over 4 million votes cast prior to Election Day."

Roughly 1.8 million votes were cast early in-person and 860,000 votes were sent by mail or left in a drop box for this election. Dietrich said this is a new record for voting by mail, especially in a non-pandemic year.

"That kind of shows that you did not have this residual effect from 2020 where people tried voting by mail," Dietrich said. "They liked it and kept doing it. This year, of course, you have people who have decided that they want to vote that way going forward so they've signed up to be on the permanent vote by mail list."

DuPage, Kane and Will counties reported 73% voter turnout Tuesday. Sangamon County reported 72% turnout while Macon County saw 67.8% of registered voters cast ballots.

Yet, those numbers are expected to rise over the next few weeks.

"We've got over 400,000 vote by mail ballots that are still out in the hands of voters," Dietrich said. "Many of those will come in. They'll push those numbers up a tiny bit, not a whole lot at this point. But it's something to keep in mind."

Ballots will be counted as long as they were postmarked by November 5. The State Board of Elections will report the final voter turnout when they meet to certify the election results on December 2.

Dietrich said the board will analyze future elections to see if early voting and vote by mail continue to grow compared to traditional voting on Election Day.