Democrat Juliana Stratton will be Illinois's next United States senator. The Associated Press declared Stratton the winner on Tuesday night, November 3, 2026, at the moment Illinois polls closed at 7 p.m. Central — a call made with no waiting for returns, in a race that had never been in much doubt — defeating Republican Don Tracy for the open Senate seat held since 1997 by Dick Durbin, who is retiring. Stratton, 61, is the state's lieutenant governor and Governor JB Pritzker's running mate since 2018. She will take office in January for a six-year term, and Senator Tammy Duckworth will become Illinois's senior senator. All election-night figures are unofficial until Illinois election officials certify the results.
The margin behind the instant call was decisive. Stratton's 1,627,266 votes were roughly 61 per cent of the votes counted for the office in the Associated Press tally, against Tracy's 994,887. An earlier snapshot compiled on Wikipedia from the same count, at 51 per cent reporting, had put Stratton at 1,475,672 votes (63.2 per cent) to Tracy's 826,140 (35.4 per cent) — the same one-sided shape from the first returns of the night. Illinois has not elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 2010, and this was the state's first open Senate election since that year.
A history-making win
Stratton's victory is a landmark in Senate history. IPM Newsroom reported that she becomes the second Black woman to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate — after Carol Moseley Braun, the first Black woman ever elected to the chamber — and Illinois's fourth Black senator overall. Decatur Radio reported that she will be the sixth Black woman in U.S. Senate history, and that her arrival will mean three Black women serving in the Senate at the same time, alongside Delaware's Lisa Blunt Rochester and Maryland's Angela Alsobrooks; the same report noted Illinois is the first state in the nation to elect two Black women to the Senate. On Chicago's Southwest Side, supporters packed the Ramova Theatre for a watch party, greeted by a DJ and signs reading “Give the people what they want” and “Black women for Juliana,” as they awaited her victory speech.
Stratton, a Chicago native and a former mediator, was first elected to the Illinois House of Representatives in 2016 and has served as lieutenant governor since 2019. In that office she helped lead the Birth Equity Initiative, aimed at the racial disparity in Illinois maternal mortality rates for Black women, spearheaded the Justice, Equity and Opportunity Initiative to shift the state's criminal legal system toward more restorative programs, and led the Ag Connects Us All Initiative on agriculture, inequity and food security — work her campaign said connected her to rural areas of the state as well as to Chicago. In announcing her bid she pointed to raising the minimum wage, the state's infrastructure record, gun safety laws and abortion protections enacted in Illinois.
Source: IPM Newsroom — Stratton biography and record as lieutenant governor
The primary that decided it — and the Durbin era it ends
In a heavily Democratic state, the real contest was the March 17 primary. Dick Durbin, who has held the seat since 1997, announced on April 23, 2025 that he would not seek a sixth term; Stratton launched her campaign the following day with Pritzker's immediate endorsement. She won the nomination with 40.4 per cent of the vote in a field of 10 candidates, ahead of U.S. Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi at 32.7 per cent and Representative Robin Kelly at 18.3 per cent — defeating the fundraising leader, Krishnamoorthi, despite his roughly $21 million raised by July. IPM reported that Pritzker downplayed his role in her win, including a hefty $10 million contribution in the primary campaign that helped her run television ads, but that the governor can now boast he helped elect a close ally to the Senate — on the same night Pritzker himself won a third term as governor.
Tracy, her Republican opponent, is a Springfield attorney and businessman who chaired the Illinois Republican Party from 2021 until his resignation in July 2024, and previously chaired the Illinois Gaming Board after being appointed in 2015. He won the Republican nomination with 40 per cent of the vote over attorney Jeannie Evans. Tracy said he ran to give a voice to the millions of Republicans in the state, but he could not overcome Illinois's Democratic lean: Republicans have not won a statewide seat in Illinois in 12 years, since JB Pritzker unseated Republican Governor Bruce Rauner — a close ally of Tracy.
A progressive platform headlined by abolishing ICE — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and a $25 minimum wage, with Medicare for All also in her programme, under a campaign message built on standing up to President Donald Trump. For Illinois's immigrant communities, including the large Punjabi community in Chicago and its suburbs, her pledge to abolish the federal immigration-enforcement agency was the most closely watched promise of the race.
That platform matters beyond Illinois. Control of the Senate is being decided across 35 races this year, and Stratton's win is a Democratic hold, not a flip — it keeps a safe seat in Democratic hands while the majority is settled in battlegrounds such as North Carolina, where Democrat Roy Cooper flipped a Republican seat earlier in the night. Democrats are in legitimate contention to flip the Senate, as WFB News put it in reporting her win, but a hold in Illinois was the foundation the party's maths required. Her campaign spokesperson, Allison Janowski, released a statement following the victory, WFB reported.
What happens next
Counting will continue until every precinct and late-counted ballot is in, and Illinois officials will then certify the result; with a lead of more than 630,000 votes, no recount path was visible on election night. Stratton's six-year Senate term begins in January 2027 — she is expected to be sworn in on January 3, 2027, when the new Congress convenes — and runs to 2033. In Washington she will join a Senate whose immigration, minimum-wage and health-care debates she campaigned directly on, as the junior senator from the state that is home to one of the largest Punjabi diaspora communities in the Midwest.