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Turnout | 54.00% ![]() | |||||||||||||||||||
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Edgar: 40–50% 50–60% 60–70% Hartigan: 40–50% 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Elections in Illinois |
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The 1990 Illinois gubernatorial election was held on November 6, 1990 to elect the governor and lieutenant governor of Illinois. The incumbent Governor Jim Thompson chose to retire instead of seeking reelection to a fifth term. The Republican nominee, Secretary of State Jim Edgar, narrowly defeated the Democratic nominee, Attorney General Neil Hartigan, by about 80,000 votes out of the over 3.2 million cast (a margin of 2.58%).
This was the first open-seat gubernatorial election in Illinois since 1952, which was 38 years previously. A competitive race, it had the narrowest margin of victory for a statewide election in Illinois that cycle and was among one of the closest gubernatorial races in the nation that year. At the time, it was the costliest campaign in state history.[1]