Where Did They Go?

THEY GAVE THEIR VOTES, THEIR MONEY AND THEIR TRUST. SO WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ILLINOIS GOP?

Illinois Politics| Voting Rights| Featured
November 14, 2026•14 min read

THE REPUBLICANS WHO WALKED AWAY: HOW THE ILLINOIS GOP LOST MORE THAN ELECTIONS

For generations, Republicans counted on communities that now appear to be slipping beyond their reach. A 174-year political tradition has ended, once-powerful Republican organizations have been transformed, and primary participation reveals another troubling development. The election results tell us what happened. The investigation now turns to what party leaders did as the warning signs accumulated.

By Staff Writer | November 14, 2026

Abraham Lincoln was still eight years away from the presidency. The Civil War had not begun. America was a very different country, and Illinois was still developing the political traditions that would help shape its future.

The year was 1852.

That was the last time McHenry County voted for a Democratic candidate for governor of Illinois.

Until November 3, 2026.

One hundred seventy-four years of political history ended when Governor JB Pritzker defeated Republican Darren Bailey in a county where generations of Republican candidates had counted on winning.

But the real story is not simply that a Democrat finally carried McHenry County. It is what happened to the Republican political organization that once depended on communities like this one, and what those changes mean for the people who have spent years supporting it.

Because McHenry County was not alone.

Across Illinois, voters have watched political organizations that once dominated their communities lose elections, lose experienced officeholders and lose influence over the decisions affecting their neighborhoods, schools, public services and local taxes.

For Republican supporters, the transformation raises a particularly difficult concern. Many have donated money, volunteered their time, displayed campaign signs and returned to the polls through repeated defeats, believing their party's leaders were building a stronger organization.

But while those promises continued, the election results moved in the opposite direction.

And when a political party loses its ability to compete, the consequences extend beyond its own supporters. Competitive elections give voters alternatives, force candidates to defend their records and create opportunities to challenge the people making decisions about public money and community priorities.

That is why what happened in McHenry County matters, even to voters who have never supported a Republican candidate.

It also brings us to Part Six of the FactsFirstus.com investigation into the Illinois Republican Party.

Our previous reporting followed campaign spending, examined internal party control, investigated leadership decisions and documented the growing number of legislative races without Republican candidates.

Now we turn to something even more fundamental.

The voters.

The McHenry County election was remarkable not only because of its place in history, but because the political shift had been developing for years.

In 2018, Pritzker lost the county by approximately 12,000 votes. Four years later, he came within roughly 1,700 votes of defeating Bailey.

This November, Pritzker won by more than 12,000 votes, according to unofficial returns.

That progression deserves attention.

A county where Republicans had enjoyed a substantial advantage became competitive. Then it delivered a clear victory to the Democratic governor.

The entire Democratic statewide ticket also carried McHenry County. Republican incumbents faced defeats in legislative and county elections, and Democrats won two countywide offices in territory where Republican success had once been remarkably consistent.

Something had changed.

The most obvious explanation might be that voters were dissatisfied with individual Republican candidates or national politics. Those factors may have contributed. But the election records reveal that the warning signs appeared before voters cast their November ballots.

In the March gubernatorial primary, Democratic participation in McHenry County increased approximately 60 percent compared with 2022, according to an analysis by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Rich Miller.

Republican participation in the same primary contest declined approximately 48 percent.

Consider what those figures represent.

While Democrats were drawing substantially more participation into their gubernatorial nomination process, Republicans were drawing substantially less.

A primary election is not a membership census. Voters can skip a primary, move, change their political preferences or participate for reasons unrelated to their long-term party loyalty. The numbers do not tell us precisely how many individual Republicans abandoned their party.

But they reveal something an organization responsible for building political participation should be examining carefully.

The party was losing ground not only in November, but in the earlier process through which its candidates were selected.

And that was happening in a county where the Republican gubernatorial nominee had carried the vote just four years earlier.

The deeper concern becomes apparent when the investigation moves east to Lake County.

There, Republican gubernatorial primary participation declined more than 48 percent compared with 2022, while Democratic participation increased more than 27 percent, according to Miller's analysis.

Then came November.

Every Democratic statewide candidate received at least 66 percent of Lake County's vote.

Only twelve years earlier, Lake County had supported as many statewide Republican candidates as Democrats.

The political balance had changed dramatically, but the shift was not the result of one election-night surprise. It developed through successive campaigns, changing voter priorities and an increasingly difficult environment for Republican candidates.

And the people responsible for Republican political strategy had years of results showing them what was happening.

That is what makes the next example particularly revealing.

DuPage County was once among the most powerful Republican political strongholds in Illinois. Its organization helped elect candidates, influenced statewide campaigns and maintained a political network that Democrats spent decades trying to overcome.

In 2016, Republicans held 17 of the 18 seats on the DuPage County Board.

Following the November 2026 election, the projected composition is exactly reversed.

Seventeen Democrats. One Republican.

The numbers speak for themselves.

The organization that once dominated nearly every seat in county government is positioned to hold only one.

And the transformation reached some of the county's most experienced Republican officeholders.

Jim Zay, the longest-serving member of the DuPage County Board, lost to Democratic newcomer Jesse Gutierrez. Unofficial results showed Gutierrez receiving 29,561 votes to Zay's 21,416.

Republican incumbents Kari Galassi, Brian Krajewski and Grant Eckhoff also lost their County Board races.

Democrats captured the sheriff's and treasurer's offices as well.

This was not simply a case of Republican candidates being unfamiliar to voters or lacking experience in public service.

Several had won elections before. They had represented their communities and developed political relationships over years.

Yet those advantages were not enough to overcome the changing electorate.

Zay pointed toward the national political environment and voters' concerns about everyday expenses, including gasoline and groceries.

Those concerns deserve consideration. Economic conditions and national political controversies can influence local races, sometimes overwhelming the reputations of individual candidates.

But DuPage County's transformation began long before the 2026 election.

Democrats gained control of its County Board in 2020 and expanded that advantage afterward.

The Republican Party had multiple election cycles to recognize what was happening.

And while the organization continued discussing its future, the number of Republican officeholders kept shrinking.

There was another warning in the primary results.

Republican gubernatorial primary participation in DuPage County fell approximately 33 percent compared with 2022, according to Miller's November 14 analysis.

That was not the same as the decline in Republican general-election support, but it added another dimension to the problem.

The organization was having difficulty maintaining participation in the process that selected its candidates, even as those candidates struggled to win the broader electorate.

Political parties depend on more than people willing to vote for their nominees every few years. They depend on volunteers, local leaders, donors, precinct organizations and voters who remain involved between elections.

When that participation weakens, rebuilding becomes more difficult.

And when it happens repeatedly across counties that once formed the foundation of a party's strength, the consequences can extend far beyond one election.

Kane County offered another example.

Longtime Republican County Clerk Jack Cunningham lost his reelection campaign to Democrat Brenda Rodgers. The county's November 12 unofficial results showed Rodgers receiving 99,468 votes to Cunningham's 68,801.

Republican County Treasurer Christopher Lauzen, a former state senator and county board chairman, also lost. Democrat Penny Wegman received 102,418 votes to Lauzen's 65,765.

These were established Republican officials with years of political experience.

Their defeats illustrate a problem that cannot be solved simply by recruiting more recognizable candidates.

The party was losing ground in communities where its candidates had previously demonstrated that they could win.

And the political changes were occurring across different offices, different candidates and different election cycles.

By the time the November results were known, the question was no longer whether suburban Republican support had weakened.

The question was how the party intended to respond.

Illinois Republican Chairman Bob Grogan acknowledged that suburban voters had been moving toward Democrats. He also suggested that frustration with Republican governance nationally and concerns about the economy had contributed to the election results.

Other Republicans pointed toward national political controversies, insufficient enthusiasm and the difficulty of competing in suburban communities whose priorities differ from those in strongly Republican downstate districts.

Democratic organizers, meanwhile, described years of sustained outreach, candidate recruitment and efforts to build relationships in communities where their party once struggled.

Those explanations are not necessarily contradictory.

National politics can influence local elections. Population changes can alter the electorate. Campaign resources can affect which messages voters hear. And local organizing can determine whether a political party maintains relationships with the people it hopes to represent.

But there is an important distinction between explaining why an election was difficult and explaining what an organization did to prepare for those difficulties.

The Illinois Republican Party had been receiving warnings for years.

In July 2026, Grogan acknowledged that the party could not expect one consultant or a single organizational adjustment to restore Republican strength in the suburbs. He discussed the need to build donor relationships and political infrastructure rather than relying on a handful of major contributors.

Those observations reflected a recognition that the party's problems extended beyond one campaign.

Yet the November results demonstrated how far the organization remained from reversing its suburban decline.

That does not establish that one chairman or one committee decision caused the losses. Political changes of this magnitude involve multiple factors, many outside the control of party officials.

But leadership does influence how an organization responds.

Party officials establish priorities, direct certain resources, develop relationships with candidates and donors, and decide how much attention to devote to communities where support is weakening.

Those responsibilities make the historical record important.

What did Republican leaders identify as their most serious challenges after the 2018 election? What changes followed the 2022 defeat? Which programs were implemented before 2026? What evidence demonstrated that those programs were working?

The answers matter because the election results show that the problem was not new.

In 2018, Republican Governor Bruce Rauner lost to Pritzker. In 2022, Bailey lost to Pritzker by approximately 12.5 percentage points statewide.

In the unofficial 2026 results, Pritzker's statewide advantage approached 24 percentage points.

Rather than closing the gap, the Republican gubernatorial nominee was losing by a substantially wider margin.

And the changes were not uniform across Illinois.

In Madison County, Bailey defeated Pritzker by 49,604 votes to 45,518. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Don Tracy also narrowly carried the county.

But Democratic candidates succeeded in other contests, illustrating that voters were not necessarily supporting one party in every race.

That contrast matters.

Illinois Republicans still maintain substantial support in many downstate communities. Their challenge is not simply that Republican voters have disappeared from the state.

It is that the party has struggled to maintain and expand its coalition in the communities essential to statewide competitiveness.

The political priorities of a voter in rural southern Illinois may differ from those of a voter in suburban DuPage County. A message that energizes one community may not resonate with another.

And a party that hopes to compete across Illinois must understand those differences rather than assuming that the same strategy will produce the same results everywhere.

That requires something more sustained than a new slogan or a fundraising appeal.

It requires knowing what voters expect, maintaining active local organizations, recruiting credible candidates and developing relationships that continue between election cycles.

It also requires recognizing that political loyalty cannot be assumed simply because a community once voted Republican.

McHenry County demonstrated that in historic fashion.

DuPage County demonstrated it through the near-complete reversal of its county government.

Lake County demonstrated it through changing primary participation and increasingly Democratic statewide results.

Kane County demonstrated it through the defeat of experienced Republican officeholders.

Different communities. Different candidates. Different circumstances.

But the election records revealed a similar direction of political change.

And behind those results are the people who have continued supporting the Republican Party through years of defeats.

The volunteers who knock on doors after work. The donors who contribute because they believe their money will help build something lasting. The candidates who agree to run even when the political environment is difficult.

Those people are essential to any political organization.

They are also entitled to understand what their organization's leadership is doing, what results its strategies are producing and how it responds when those strategies fail to achieve their objectives.

Following the election, Republican lieutenant governor nominee Aaron Del Mar called for a state convention, revised bylaws, permanent candidate recruitment and stronger regional operations.

His proposals reflected one view of what rebuilding should involve.

But structural changes alone cannot guarantee that voters will return.

A new chairman does not automatically restore a county's competitiveness. Revised bylaws do not ensure stronger primary participation. And fundraising cannot substitute for understanding the communities a party seeks to represent.

The election results establish the scale of the challenge. They do not establish precisely how many individual voters switched parties, stayed home or left Illinois, nor do they prove that any single organizational decision caused the changes.

What they do establish is that the Illinois Republican Party has experienced substantial losses in communities where it once enjoyed considerable influence.

And those losses have developed over years.

Return to McHenry County.

In 1852, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate carried the county. It would take another 174 years for that to happen again.

Now consider DuPage County, where Republicans once controlled seventeen of eighteen County Board seats. The projected political balance has been reversed.

Between those two remarkable milestones are generations of campaigns, thousands of volunteers, political organizations that once dominated their communities and years of promises about the future.

The election results tell us what happened to Republican political strength.

They also reveal how long the warning signs had been visible.

But they do not provide a complete accounting of the decisions made by the people responsible for responding to those warnings.

And that is the unfinished business of this investigation.

For six installments, FactsFirstus.com has followed the money, examined leadership decisions, investigated party control, documented the elections Republicans never entered and traced the erosion of support in communities they once dominated.

Now there is one final place to look.

Inside the organization itself.

Who exercises authority? How are decisions made? What mechanisms allow Republican voters and party members to demand accountability? And how have those structures responded to years of electoral decline?

Those are the questions awaiting examination in Part Seven.

Because the people who gave their votes, their time and their money can see what happened at the ballot box.

The final chapter will examine the record of those entrusted with leading the organization through it.

OFFICIAL SOURCES AND PRIMARY DOCUMENTS

SECONDARY REPORTING AND ADDITIONAL RESEARCH

PREVIOUS FACTSFIRSTUS.COM INVESTIGATIONS

Illinois GOP Voter DeclineIllinois Republican Party Leadership2026 Illinois Election ResultsRepublican Voter Turnout CollapseIllinois Suburban Political RealignmentIllinois GOP Accountability Investigation
Back to Blog