Politics of Illinois - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Statewide elected officials

Office	Officeholder	Party	Took office
Governor	Pat Quinn Pat Quinn (politician) Patrick Joseph "Pat" Quinn III is the 41st and current Governor of Illinois. He is a member of the Democratic Party. Previously elected three times to statewide office, Quinn was the sitting lieutenant governor and became governor on January 29, 2009, when the previous governor, Rod Blagojevich,...	Democratic Democratic Party (United States) The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...	2009
Lieutenant Governor	Sheila Simon Sheila Simon Sheila J. Simon is an American politician and educator who is the 46th and current Lieutenant Governor of the state of Illinois. She was a Professor of Law at the Southern Illinois University School of Law. Simon is the daughter of former U.S...	Democratic	2011
Secretary of State	Jesse White Jesse White (politician) Jesse Clark White is a Democratic American politician. He is currently the 37th and second-longest serving Secretary of State of Illinois, after James A. Rose, and the first African American to hold this position....	Democratic	1999
Attorney General Illinois Attorney General The Illinois Attorney General is the highest legal officer of the state of Illinois in the United States. Originally an appointed office, it is now an office filled by election through universal suffrage...	Lisa Madigan Lisa Madigan Lisa Madigan has been the 41st Attorney General of the US state of Illinois since 2003, when she became the first female attorney general for Illinois...	Democratic	2003
Comptroller Illinois State Comptroller The Comptroller of Illinois is an elected official of the U.S. state of Illinois. He or she is responsible for maintaining the State's accounts, and for ordering payments into and out of them...	Judy Baar Topinka Judy Baar Topinka Judy Baar Topinka is the Illinois State Comptroller and former Illinois State Treasurer, having served as Treasurer from 1995 to 2007, and former chairwoman of the Illinois Republican Party. She was the first woman to become state treasurer, first to be elected to three consecutive terms and the...	Republican	2011
Treasurer Illinois State Treasurer The Treasurer of Illinois is an elected official of the U.S. state of Illinois. The office was created by the Constitution of Illinois.-Current occupant and duties:, the Treasurer of Illinois is Dan Rutherford, a member of the Republican Party...	Dan Rutherford Dan Rutherford Dan Rutherford is the Illinois Treasurer. He served as a Republican member of the Illinois Senate, representing the 53rd district, from 2003 to 2011, and in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1993 through 2002.-Early life and education:...	Republican	2011
U.S. Senator (Class II)	Mark Kirk Mark Kirk Mark Steven Kirk is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and a member of the Republican Party. Previously, Kirk was a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Illinois's 10th congressional district....	Republican Republican Party (United States) The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...	2010
U.S. Senator (Class III)	Richard Durbin	Democratic	1997

2004

Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry

John Kerry

John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...

carried Illinois with 54% of the vote. His victory in Illinois was determined by a wide margin of votes cast in Cook County

Cook County, Illinois

Cook County is a county in the U.S. state of Illinois, with its county seat in Chicago. It is the second most populous county in the United States after Los Angeles County. The county has 5,194,675 residents, which is 40.5 percent of all Illinois residents. Cook County's population is larger than...

. However, many counties outside of the Chicago metropolitan area voted for President Bush. Illinois is a state put in an odd position in most Presidential elections; Chicago typically overwhelmingly supports Democratic candidates, while the majority of the state has a fairly conservative culture. Several of the notable "downstate" blue spots that contributed to Kerry's win include East Saint Louis, the Quad City region

Quad Cities

The Quad Cities is a group of five cities straddling the Mississippi River on the Iowa–Illinois boundary. These cities, Davenport and Bettendorf and Rock Island, Moline, and East Moline , are the center of the Quad Cities Metropolitan Area, which, as of 2010, had an estimated population of...

, Peoria

Peoria, Illinois

Peoria is the largest city on the Illinois River and the county seat of Peoria County, Illinois, in the United States. It is named after the Peoria tribe. As of the 2010 census, the city was the seventh-most populated in Illinois, with a population of 115,007, and is the third-most populated...

, and Champaign

Champaign County, Illinois

Champaign County is a county located in the U.S. state of Illinois. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 201,081, which is an increase of 11.9% from 179,669 in 2000.. It is the 10th most populous county in Illinois...

and Jackson

Jackson County, Illinois

Jackson County, incorporated January 10, 1816, is a county located in the U.S. state of Illinois. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 60,218, which is an increase of 1.0% from 59,612 in 2000...

counties, which have a large college-bound population.

2008

The 2008 Presidential election featured Democratic candidate, and Illinois native, Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

facing off against US Senator John McCain

John McCain

John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....

. Barack Obama carried Illinois by a much bigger margin than Kerry did in 2004. Obama won Illinois with 61% of the vote. In addition to carrying major urban centers, Obama surprisingly won a number of rural counties as well. Prior to his election to President, he represented the state in the US Senate since January 2005.

Statewide elected officials

2004

2008

See also