How Oak Lawn Voted In The 2020 Presidential Election

OAK LAWN, IL — As expected, Illinois turned blue for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, who became the projected winner over President Donald Trump on Saturday. Illinois voters put 20 electoral votes in Biden’s pocket on Nov. 3.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton won Illinois’s 20 electoral votes over Trump by 16.9 percentage points. With approximately 90 percent of the state’s votes counted in 2020, unofficial vote tallies show Biden overcoming Trump by 13.2 percentage points, according to the Washington Post. The results are taking longer this year because of the large number of mail-in ballots.

Illinois has voted Democratic in the past six presidential elections. Barack Obama won by 16.9 percentage points in 2012. Most of the state’s Democratic votes are clustered around Illinois’s urban centers, such as Chicago, Springfield and Metro East, where some St. Louis suburbs are scattered into Illinois across the Missouri River.

The last time Illinois went red was during the 1988 presidential election between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, ending a Republican electoral winning streak of six presidential elections that also included 1968, 1972, 1976, 1980 and 1984.

So how did Trump's support in Oak Lawn compare with his vote totals in 2016, when he was running against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?

According to the 2016 election results available from the Cook County Clerk, Trump carried three precincts in Oak Lawn, including precinct #56 (Richards High School), precinct #82 (Hometown Elementary School) and precinct #86 (David Johnston Center).

Trump carried eight precincts in 2020, including precincts #2 and #99 (Covington Elementary School, precinct #44 (Harnew Elementary School), precinct #35 (Sward Elementary School), precinct #5 (Kolmar Elementary School) and precinct #62 (Grace Community Church). Trump picked up the same three Oak Lawn precincts he won in 2016, including precincts #56 (Richards High School), #82 (Hometown Elementary School) and #86 (David Johnston Center).

Residents canceled each other’s votes in precinct #44, also at Harnew, where Trump and Biden were tied with 233 votes each. The Cook County Clerk, the election authority for suburban Cook County, has not yet certified the 2020 election results for Worth Township, where Oak Lawn commands the largest swatch of precincts.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of how Trump fared in 2016 and 2020 in Oak Lawn precincts:

Source: Cook County Clerk