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Turnout | 48.48% ![]() | |||||||||||||||||||
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Rauner: 40–50% 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% 80–90% Quinn: 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% 80–90% | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Elections in Illinois |
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The 2014 Illinois gubernatorial election was held on November 4, 2014, to elect the governor and lieutenant governor of Illinois, concurrently with the election to Illinois's Class II U.S. Senate seat, as well as other elections to the United States Senate in other states and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections.
Prior to this cycle, candidates for governor and lieutenant governor were nominated separately, and the primary winners ran on the same ticket in the general election. In 2011, the law was changed to allow candidates for governor to pick their own running mates. Incumbent Democratic Lieutenant Governor Sheila Simon did not run for reelection, instead running unsuccessfully for comptroller. She was replaced as Quinn's running mate by Paul Vallas, a former CEO of Chicago Public Schools. Rauner chose Wheaton City councilwoman Evelyn Sanguinetti as his running mate and Grimm chose Alex Cummings.
Incumbent Democratic Governor Pat Quinn ran for re-election to a second full term in office. Quinn, then the lieutenant governor, assumed the office of governor on January 29, 2009, upon the impeachment and removal of Rod Blagojevich. He narrowly won a full term in 2010. Primary elections were held on March 18, 2014.[1] Quinn won the Democratic primary, while the Republicans chose businessman Bruce Rauner and the Libertarians nominated political activist Chad Grimm.
Rauner defeated Quinn in the general election with 50.3% of the vote to Quinn's 46.4%, winning every county in the state except for Cook County, home to the city of Chicago and 40% of the state's residents.[2][3] Quinn was the only incumbent Democratic governor to lose a general election in 2014 and remained the last one to do so until Nevada's Steve Sisolak in 2022.
As of 2024, this alongside the concurrent comptroller election is the only time since 2010 that Republicans won a statewide election in Illinois. It is also the last time a Republican has been elected governor of Illinois. This is the most recent and the last Illinois gubernatorial election in which the winner won a majority of Illinois's counties.