How Many People Voted In The Illinois Primary?

The latest primary event to sweep the nation may have been even bigger than Super Tuesday itself. Super Tuesday 3 had voters clamoring to the polls in Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina, Illinois, and Florida. All eyes were on the Sunshine State, where the most delegates were up for grabs and where Sen. Marco Rubio called his campaign quits after losing big in his home state. The evening offered few surprises, save for the sheer plethora of voters casting their ballots in Illinois. How many people voted in the Illinois Primary? Concrete numbers have yet to be released, though the impressive voter turnout has not gone unnoticed.

In places like Adams County, voter turnout was at around 50 percent. Other districts were similarly hopeful that they'd see historic numbers. Cook County Clerk David Orr had this to say about the primary when interviewed by Chicago ABC affiliate WLS:

I am hoping that we reach 40 percent or better. Now, in a primary in Cook County it's usually at 20 or 25, but in 1990 it was at 40 percent, and in 2008 when Barack Obama was a candidate it was 43.3 percent. ... We broke records of early voting, we broke records of mail voting, and we broke records of what we call election day registration, so those are all good signs.

Indeed, early voter turnout numbers were absolutely staggering. The aforementioned 2008 election in which then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama had voters showing up and showing love for the candidate are nothing compared to what has emerged on Super Tuesday 3 this election season. Early voter tallies from as recently as Sunday has at least 129,957 ballots collected. That's 48,267 more ballots than the 81,690 received from early voters in 2008.

What those numbers reveal in terms of which candidates came out on top has been wholly unsurprising. Donald Trump was announced as the winner of the GOP Illinois primary fairly early in the evening, while the Democratic Illinois primary came down to the wire. Numbers were incredibly close between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton but Clinton ultimately won the Illinois primary shortly after midnight.

Given the fact that Clinton appears to be firmly committed to carrying on President Obama's legacy if elected, it's unsurprising that the former Secretary of State won in his home state. Final numbers have yet to be released as to just how many people voted in the Illinois primary. What has emerged points to the event offering one of the most impressive voter turnouts in recent memory.