Illinois 2026 SENATE FORECAST

2026 Illinois Senate Forecast:

The Pollsmax 2026 Illinois Senate forecast currently gives Democrat Juliana Stratton a 97.7% chance of defeating Republican Don Tracy. Pollsmax projects Stratton to receive 60.2% of the vote compared with 39.9% for Tracy, a projected Democratic margin of 20.3 percentage points. The model currently rates the race as Solid Democratic. The forecast is updated using 100,000 simulations incorporating polling and race fundamentals. See the Pollsmax forecast methodology.

The 2026 Illinois Senate election features Democrat Juliana Stratton and Republican Don Tracy. The seat is open and is currently controlled by Democrats. In 2024, Kamala Harris won Illinois by 10.9%, and Democrats are expected to easily retain the state's Senate seat in 2026. The race will test whether Stratton can keep Illinois safely blue after Dick Durbin's retirement or whether Tracy can make the open-seat race more competitive than the state's federal partisanship suggests. Illinois remains a key Democratic hold as the party tries to protect its path to a US Senate majority.