The results are in.
On Tuesday night, Illinois voters headed to the polls for the Republican gubernatorial primary.
The race was between farmer and two-time Republican Gubernatorial nominee Darren Bailey, DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick, and real estate developer and owner Rick Heidner
The race was not close at all, and Bailey came out on top.
Newsweek reported more on the results and gave insight if Repiblicans have a chance to flip the Governor’s seat:
Darren Bailey won the Illinois Republican primary on Tuesday and will now face Democratic Governor JB Pritzker in the November election. Polling on the race is pretty threadbare at the moment, but prediction markets aren’t hopeful Republicans can win.
The Republican primary left the party at a crossroads, with voters deciding between putting state Senator Darren Bailey up against Pritzker despite his huge loss in 2022 or putting up a lesser-known candidate. Pritzker has easily won both of his elections. But gubernatorial control in Illinois jostles back and forth between political parties, making it a long shot for Republicans, though not out of the realm of possibility.
On Tuesday, Bailey won the GOP primary with 48.8 percent of the vote when the race was called. He beat out Ted Dabrowski, James Mendrick and Rick Heidner. All four campaigned on affordability, crime and dissatisfaction with Pritzker’s leadership, but they differed sharply in background, tone and strategy as they tried to emerge from a low‑budget, relatively quiet primary.
There’s only been one general election poll for Illinois governor, which was conducted months ago, in November. Performed by Victory Research, a majority of those polled said they’d vote for Pritzker in a head-to-head matchup against the individual candidates. Over 54 percent said they would vote for Pritzker in a matchup with Bailey.
Given the timing of that poll, it’s not a great indicator of how people plan to vote moving forward. But prediction markets are also putting the race in Democrats’ favor.