Mayor Brandon Johnson and his progressive movement have been stymied time and time again at the polls since their election triumph in 2023, most pointedly when city voters rejected his keystone plan to impose a so-called mansion tax and use the inflow to provide for housing for people who are unhoused.
There’s an easy explanation: Though Chicago is far less conservative than the nation as a whole, the city really is a centrist town. In a poll of 1,021 Cook County residents conducted in late February, a little more than third of Chicago adults identified as liberal. While they vastly outnumber the 16% who say they’re conservative, moderates are far and away the biggest bloc, accounting for 48% of city residents.
The breakdown has held pretty steady over the last decade, which suggests that Johnson’s victory was an anomaly and not a sign of a tectonic shift in the electorate. The results also imply that unless he moves toward the center, he could easily lose his reelection bid in two years to a centrist candidate.
Chicago, like Illinois, remains solidly blue, as we saw in the 2024 presidential election, when neighboring states switched sides and voted for Donald Trump for president. But we’ve long been more pragmatic Democrats who value officeholders mostly for what they get done on the basics. We still want a city that works.
That moderate streak was apparent in last year’s Democratic primary election for Cook County state’s attorney, when the progressive candidate, Clayton Harris III, was defeated by Eileen O’Neill Burke, who had campaigned on being a tougher prosecutor and went on to win in the general election. The sentiment also showed up in November, when most of Johnson’s left-leaning allies lost in the election of a new Chicago Board of Education.
Chicago is something of an outlier when it comes to political ideology. Nationally, conservatives have been gaining in numbers at the expense of liberals and moderates, according to our recent polling. In 2019, 31% of American adults called themselves conservative; today, their share is up to 38%, which makes them as numerous as middle-of-the-roaders. Liberals make up the remaining 24%.
In Chicago, the center still holds. True, Trump got more votes in the city in 2024 than ever before, but Vice President Kamala Harris still won handily, with 77% of the vote, and moderate and liberal Democrats alike had a clean sweep down the rest of the ballot.
The relative stability is apparent in our polling. Looking back at their past political selves, 38% of potential voters — those who were at least 18 years old in 2016 — said they were liberal in the 2016, when Trump won his first time around, while 42% reported being moderates and 20% were conservative. In 2023, liberals accounted for 32%, moderates 50% and conservatives 18% of Chicago adults, based on respondents’ recollections.
Johnson won two years ago by mobilizing a base of progressives and members of government labor unions — and by depicting his opponent in the runoff election, former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas, as an extremist backed by Trump donors. Asked to choose between them, many mainstream voters sided with Johnson.
If voters are given such a polarized choice again, Johnson might be able to win over enough voters in the middle to get reelected. But if his next opponent is truly a moderate, the mayor could turn into another one-termer.
Centrists account for almost half the electorate, and in our polls, they’re the most likely grouping to say that Chicago would be best led by a moderate (74%) and the least likely to approve of Johnson’s performance (16%). They will decide the next mayor’s race and, by extension, city policy in 2025 — and likely beyond.
Will Johnson is the Chicago-based CEO of The Harris Poll, one of the world’s leading public-opinion research firms.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email [email protected].
