ROCK ISLAND — Incumbent Democrat Mike Halpin was relieved when he got the word from his wife that he won the District 72 seat in the Illinois House again.

Late Tuesday night, with nearly 84% of the precincts reporting, Halpin trailed Republican challenger Glen Evans Sr., an ordained minister, by about 1,100 votes.

But despite having the chills and a fever, Halpin was plenty calm. And with good reason.

“Based on the numbers that we assumed for the early vote … that’s something we can track, as to who has requested an absentee ballot," he said Wednesday. "So we really encouraged people to vote early just to protect themselves from the pandemic.

“We saw the Democrats were listening to that message and did vote early and in huge numbers,” he said. “We had an idea that there were about 42,000 votes throughout the county. And my district is of course about three-quarters of the county. We assumed that there were about 30,000 votes left, that most of them were probably going to be Democratic votes, listening to our message to get out and vote early. So we were pretty confident that we would pull it out in the end.”

They easily did, with 27,393 votes for just under 60% compared with Evans’ 18,458 votes for about 40%.

Because he wasn’t feeling well, Halpin dozed off several times. His wife delivered the good news that the absentee vote had finally been updated.