As they have in previous election years, a majority of voters last month in Brookfield and Riverside threw their support behind the Democrat on the presidential ballot.
According to results from the Cook County Clerk’s Office, which certified the numbers on Nov. 26, about 70% of voters in each village voted for Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz over President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance.
In Riverside, Harris won 3,678 votes, representing about 69.9% of the vote, while Trump won 1,498 votes, about 28.5% of ballots cast.
The votes in Brookfield appeared to shake out with a similar proportion. Harris won 7,763 votes, or about 66.9% of them, while Trump earned 3,696 votes, or about 31.8%. It is impossible to quantify the exact number of votes cast by Brookfielders, because in Cook County, voting precincts are drawn based on the borders of townships rather than municipalities. Four of the 12 precincts that cover land within Brookfield also account for residents of neighboring villages, meaning the precinct data out of Brookfield is intermingled with votes from residents of LaGrange, LaGrange Park and Lyons.
In North Riverside, Harris took 2,626 votes, about 62.4%, while Trump won 1,513 votes, about 36.0%, although one precinct that covers part of North Riverside falls mostly into Forest Park.
In all three villages, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took home less than 2% of the vote, though Kennedy endorsed Trump after suspending his campaign in August. Kennedy is now Trump’s presumptive nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services.
Despite how locals voted, Trump won the popular and electoral vote to become the 47th president. While Harris won in Illinois, reports show it was the tightest race in the state since 1988 when George H. W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis.
Voting patterns
During the past three presidential elections, Riverside has remained mostly consistent in its voting habits that lean blue. In 2016, Democratic candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earned about 66.1% of votes, while in 2020, President Joe Biden earned about 69.8% of votes. In 2016, that figure represented about 3,000 votes, which increased to about 3,800 votes in 2020. Trump earned about 1,570 votes in 2016 and about 1,650 in 2020 from Riversiders. The number of voters fell across the board this year compared to 2020.
In Brookfield, voting has grown in numbers every election since 2016, with some growth toward preferring Democrats. In 2016, Clinton earned about 5,200 votes, or about 61.1% of the total, while Biden earned about 6,900 votes, or about 67.8% of votes, in 2020. Trump has also earned more votes in Brookfield overtime, though his proportion of the vote has fallen; he earned about 2,800 or 33.5% of votes in 2016, about 3,300 or 32.2% in 2020 and about 3,700 or 31.8% of votes this year.
The Democratic candidate also maintained a majority of votes across all three elections in North Riverside, though voting blue appears to have peaked in 2020. In 2016, about 2,300 residents voted for Clinton and about 1,200 for Trump. In 2020, about 2,700 voted for Biden while Trump received roughly the same number of votes. This year, about 1,500 residents came out to back the President-elect while numbers for Harris fell to about 2,600.
Dick W. Simpson, a political science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and former Chicago alderman, told the Landmark that Riverside, Brookfield and North Riverside generally fit the voting trends found in the region.
“Most of the suburbs, decades back, if you go to DuPage County to your west, have been Republican, and that has changed because the demography has changed,” he said. “People have moved out of [Chicago] or come in, as immigrants, into these suburbs and changed the basic demography, so they’ve been going more and more Democratic.”
He said the smaller voter turnout this year in Riverside compared to 2020 fit national and state trends — according to the Associated Press, about 5 million fewer ballots were submitted nationally last month than in the 2020 election, and turnout in Illinois was down 9% from four years ago — while Brookfield and North Riverside shirked them.
“The suburb that gained votes means new people have moved in there, or it’s become more Democratic,” he said.
Simpson said he expected national voting trends to reflect backlash to Trump’s proposed policies in the 2026 midterm and 2028 presidential elections.
“The reason is the tariffs, if they’re imposed, will cost the average household $4,000 more a year,” he said. “Cutting taxes on the rich will mean that everybody else is going to have to pay more.”
Cook County’s certified data shows that Riverside’s tax levy referendum passed by 66 votes, with 2,520 “yes” to 2,454 “no.” The referendum appeared to pass by just five votes immediately after Election Day. The referendum’s passage will allow the village to continue maintaining streets on-schedule without facing delays due to a lack of funding.
