With the 2023 Chicago mayoral election just weeks away, voters heading to the polls will have nine candidates to choose from in what is widely expected to be the first of two rounds to this year's election.
Beginning with the 1999 Chicago municipal elections, a runoff format was introduced. Under the system, elections where no candidate receives 50 percent or more of the vote head to a second "runoff" round between the top two vote-getters.
Though the system was introduced in 1999, Mayor Richard M. Daley won in landslides with 70 percent or more of the vote in the 1999, 2003 and 2007 mayoral elections.
The 2011 election, while the city's most competitive in decades, failed to advance to a runoff, as Rahm Emanuel deflected challenges from Gery Chico, Miguel del Valle and Carol Moseley Braun with over 55 percent of the vote.
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The 2015 mayoral election saw the city's first-ever runoff election, as incumbent Rahm Emanuel and Chuy García advanced to a second round as the top two vote-getters above Bob Fioretti and Willie Wilson, who also ran notable campaigns.
Emanuel won just over 45 percent of the votes in the election's first round, with García carrying slightly over a third of the vote.
In the runoff election, Emanuel carried 35 of the city's 50 wards and won more than 56 percent of the vote, defeating the then-Cook County Commissioner García and winning a second term as Chicago's mayor.
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The 2019 election also advanced to a runoff, with Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle advancing over a crowded field of 14 candidates on the ballot.
Despite advancing as the top two vote-getters, Lightfoot and Preckwinkle carried just 17.54 percent and 16.04 percent of the first-round vote respectively.
The following seven candidates received at least five percent of the vote in the first round of the 2019 mayoral election:
- Bill Daley
- Willie Wilson
- Susana Mendoza
- Amara Enyia
- Jerry Joyce
- Gery Chico
- Paul Vallas
While the first round of the 2019 election was fiercely competitive, a Daley-era landslide occurred in the runoff election, as Lightfoot carried all 50 wards and won nearly 74 percent of the vote.
Should the 2023 mayoral election head to a runoff, it will be both the third runoff election in city history as well as Chicago's third consecutive mayoral runoff.
More information on the city's elections history can be found on the Chicago Board of Elections website.
