There are now 18 candidates vying to represent Illinois’ 9th Congressional District (16 Democrats and two Republicans), a seat that the retiring U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky has held since 1999. 

The district was created on March 4, 1853. Its boundaries have shifted repeatedly over the years through the state’s once-a-decade redistricting process, reflecting changes in population and politics. From its inception until 1949, the district’s representatives fluctuated between Democrats and Republicans, but Democrats have continuously held the district since then. Just three people have represented the district across those 76 years, including:

• Sidney Yates — 1949-1963
• Edward Finnegan — 1963-1964 (resigned when he was appointed a Cook County Circuit Court judge)
• Sidney Yates (again) — 1965-1999
• Jan Schakowsky — 1999-present

With redistricting (the process of redrawing district maps to reflect population changes) and gerrymandering (the manipulation of those maps to favor one party/candidate over another) in the news lately as Texas Republicans attempt to adopt new congressional district maps to protect the GOP’s narrow majority in the U.S. House — plus the first open race for Illinois’ 9th District in decades — the RoundTable took a look at how congressional districts have been shaped over the years.

Based on the 2021 redistricting that followed the 2020 census, the 9th Congressional District of Illinois covers parts of Cook, Lake and McHenry counties. The district includes all or parts of Chicago, Evanston, Glenview, Skokie, Morton Grove, Niles, Northfield, Prospect Heights, Wilmette, Buffalo Grove, Hawthorn Woods, Wauconda, Island Lake, Long Grove, Lake Barrington, Algonquin Township, Cary, Crystal Lake, Lake in the Hills, Lakewood, Oakwood Hills, Trout Valley, Algonquin, Port Barrington, Barrington Hills and Fox River Grove. 

The district includes more than 740,000 people, with a median income of $90,000 and a diverse population that is 59% white, 15% Asian, 13% Hispanic and 9% Black. 

There are 17 congressional districts in Illinois, 14 of which are held by Democrats (82%) and three by Republicans (18%). In the 2024 presidential election, 44% of Illinois voters cast their ballot for Donald Trump. 

Before the 2020 census, Illinois Democrats held 13 congressional seats, and Republicans held five. Following that census, the state lost a congressional seat due to a decline in population. In 2021, Democrats drew up new districts that reduced Republican seats from five to three and increased Democratic districts to 14. Republicans have argued that congressional districts in Illinois have been drawn so that Republican voters do not have proportional representation in Congress.

Meanwhile, the Texas state legislature has decided to execute a rare mid-decade redistricting plan to help preserve the GOP’s 219-212 majority in the House. Texas Democrats have left the state in protest, taking haven in Illinois to prevent a vote on the new maps. 

In a recent Wall Street Journal article titled “Pritzker’s Illinois, Temporary Home to Texas Democrats, Is a Gerrymandering Hot Spot,” national political reporter John McCormick wrote that “when Democratic lawmakers from Texas arrived in Chicago early this week fleeing a congressional redistricting vote back home, they touched down on some of the most gerrymandered soil in the nation.”

According to the 2021 Princeton Gerrymandering Project Redistricting Report Card, a tool to help the public identify gerrymandered maps, both Texas and Illinois received a score of “F” or “poor” for the fairness of its maps. The website notes that Illinois’ districts are “very uncompetitive relative to other maps that could have been drawn” and give a “significant” advantage to Democratic incumbents.

The report card shows that gerrymandering is a regular practice in red states and blue states, large and small states, and across the Northeast, West, Midwest and South, so no state is exempt.

According to a 2021 Illinois Policy Institute paper called “Illinois’ Extreme Risk of Gerrymandering Becomes a Reality with Congressional Map,” one of the main consequences of gerrymandering is discouraging candidates to run for office, as well as reducing voter participation. On average, 4.7 million voting-age Illinoisans live in state legislative districts where there’s only one choice for state representative on the ballot.

The paper also recommends that Illinois should place mapping power in the hands of a nonpartisan redistricting commission made up of Democrats, Republicans and Independents to prevent one party from carving out uncompetitive districts.

When Gov. JB Pritzker first ran for office in 2018, he said he favored an independent mapmaking commission to reduce gerrymandering, but he failed to follow through on that pledge and signed into law a map drawn by Democrats in 2021. 

Public support for redistricting reform in Illinois is widespread, though. According to polling from the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, 64% of Illinoisans favored the idea in 2020, with only 22% against it.

But change is unlikely to come anytime soon, with states like California recently threatening to retaliate against Texas by further reducing their number of Republican seats. Last month, Pritzker called Texas’ move “cheating,” Capital News Illinois reported, and he didn’t rule out revising Illinois’ maps as a “counterbalance.”