Illinois · Senate

Who is running?

Juliana Stratton (Democratic), Don Tracy (Republican), Whitfield Harrington Jr. (no party recorded).

The race, in brief

Illinois elects a senator on November 3, 2026, for an open seat: Democratic incumbent Dick Durbin, in the seat since 1997, announced on April 23, 2025 that he would not seek a sixth term. It is the first open Senate election in the state since 2010, and Republicans have not won a Senate election there since that race. The text gives no presidential results. The state profile on file gives a non-Hispanic white share of 0.6, a Hispanic share of 0.185 and a college share of 0.4.

The Democratic nominee is Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton, backed by Governor JB Pritzker from her launch, who won the March 17 primary with 40.4% over Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi (32.7%) and Robin Kelly (18.3%). Krishnamoorthi had raised $24 million by December 2025, and the primary featured exchanges over donors tied to ICE contractors. The Republican nominee is Don Tracy, a former state party chair, who won with 40% over attorney Jeannie Evans; the text has no Republican primary section beyond that sentence.

The text lists no rater predictions, no general-election polls and no fundraising for the nominees.

The facts carry no model forecast rows for this race, so there is no model figure to report.

The facts, each beside its sentence

Not in the source: No model forecast in the facts (facts.forecast is empty).; No rater predictions and no general-election polling in the text.; No Republican primary section: Tracy's background beyond former state party chair, Evans' share and other candidates are not given.; No fundraising for Stratton or Tracy.; No presidential or past Senate results for Illinois in the text.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 8d9fe0e84993; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.

Who holds the seat now

Richard J. Durbin (Democrat), in this chamber since 1997, 5 terms, class 2 (term ends 2027). Committees: Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry; Senate Committee on Appropriations; Senate Committee on the Judiciary (Ranking Member).

Tammy Duckworth (Democrat), in this chamber since 2017, 2 terms, class 3 (term ends 2029). Committees: Senate Committee on Armed Services; Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

From the congress-legislators dataset (CC0), archived as ae8cb9477c48. For a Senate race this lists both of the state's senators; the one whose term ends in the election year holds the seat on the ballot. For a House district redrawn for 2026 it is the member elected under the old lines with this number, who may be running elsewhere; the dossier above names who is running here.

The money

FEC bulk candidate summaries through July 27, 2026; $24,646,260 of independent expenditures for or against these candidates this cycle (FEC Schedule E, types 24E and 24A), which is the parties' and outside groups' own revealed view of whether this seat is in play.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 6.9 points toward the Republicans from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.

The state in numbers

ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.

Has anyone polled it?

We hold no published poll of this general election. A search of aggregators, pollster releases, university polls and local news on 2 October found none (primary polls exist for some races and are not this contest). That is what we could find, not proof that no poll has been conducted. When one is published it enters the poll model and this page gains a nowcast.

Who is ahead, and by how much?

Margins and probabilities are for Juliana Stratton. With no polls, this is the fundamentals forecast alone: the state's own past results for this office and for president, its demographics, economy, religion and government employment, the candidates' incumbency, experience and money, and the national environment for this midterm.

How wide is the range?

In 8 of 10 simulations the margin falls between +5 and +40 points. The spread is the fundamentals model's own measured error (sd 13.4 points), not a guess: a forecast without polls is uncertain and is shown that way.

How accurate is a fundamentals-only forecast?

Tested on past races without letting it see them: across 175 Senate and governor races in 2016-2022 it missed the final margin by 8.3 points on average, and by 6.7 points across 35 races in 2024. Our poll-based forecast missed by 5.4 on the same races. Most races it is used for here are lopsided enough that an 8-point miss would not change the winner.

Where did every number come from?

Run 6c050b1b, single_race_latent/0.8.1, as of 2026-10-01 23:02 UTC, basis: ground-up prior only, no polls.