This election isn't about one mayor's personality. It's about whether Chicago is winning or losing — measured against the cities fighting for the same residents, jobs, and investment.
Every number below is sourced and dated. Peer cities are the large U.S. metros Chicago competes with for people and employers. Rankings use the most recent full-year data available as of September 2026.
A city doesn't decline because people stop caring about it. It declines when the fundamentals — safety, schools, taxes, growth — fall behind the competition, and families and employers quietly make other plans. Here's the math.
01
Crime is the #1 voter concern in every Chicago poll — 46% named it a top-two issue in April 2026. The question isn't whether Chicago has a crime problem. It's how far behind peer cities the starting line is.
Sources: FBI Crime Data Explorer · Council on Criminal Justice
02
In one 2026 poll, property taxes displaced even crime as voters' #1 concern. Chicagoans aren't just paying more — they're paying more than people in the cities Chicago is losing residents to.
Sources: Lincoln Institute, 50-State Property Tax Comparison · Cook County Treasurer study · Census ACS 2024
03
Chicago grew for a third straight year — about 5,300 new residents, back to ~99% of its 2020 population. The problem is the competition: Sun Belt peers are adding people and jobs several times faster, and employers notice.
Sources: Census Vintage 2025, city populations · Census Vintage 2025, metro populations · Bureau of Labor Statistics, metro employment
04
The metro area is short roughly 225,000 homes. Chicago builds far fewer per capita than its competitors — then acts surprised when rents rise and young workers leave.
Sources: Census Building Permits Survey · NLIHC, The Gap 2025
05
Chicago spends about $30,000 per student — roughly 70% above the national average of $17,619. Math proficiency sits near 18%, reading near 31%, and enrollment has collapsed by tens of thousands. Money isn't the problem. Results are.
Sources: Illinois Policy / Report Card analysis · Census school-system finances · NAEP TUDA 2024
06
Chicago's pensions are among the worst-funded of any major American city — roughly 28 cents on the dollar against a national average near 82. Every budget fight, every tax hike, every service cut traces back to this hole.
Sources: Civic Federation · Truth in Accounting, Financial State of the Cities 2026 · S&P downgrade notice
07
18% of Chicago voters named homelessness a top-two issue in April 2026 — ranking it ahead of transit, immigration, and education. Visible encampments shape how residents and visitors judge whether the city is functioning.
Sources: Chicago DFSS 2024 PIT report · King County PIT count
08
Transit ridership still hasn't recovered — and safety, smoking enforcement, and cleanliness are why. A transit system people avoid is a tax on every worker who can't.
Sources: CTA ridership reports · APTA ridership policy brief · LA Metro
09
Chicago spent $639.65 million on its New Arrivals mission (Aug 2022–Dec 2024) — 42% of it from the city's Corporate Fund, per the July 2026 inspector general audit. Voters keep asking what that money bought them.
Sources: Chicago OIG assessment, July 2026 · NYC Council asylum-seekers report
10
More than 1 in 4 Loop offices sits empty. Downtown's commercial tax base funds the services the whole city uses — when it erodes, residential property taxes fill the hole.
Sources: Cresa Chicago CBD report Q4 2025 · Placer.ai via Commercial Search
11
Trash pickup, potholes, snow removal, 311 response — the unglamorous stuff. In open-ended polling, "public services" was the #2 concern after safety. A city that can't do the basics can't credibly promise the big things.
Sources: Orkin rattiest cities · HouseFresh dirtiest cities · NORC ChicagoSpeaks Q1 2026
Companies don't leave in a vacuum. They leave when crime, taxes, and dysfunction make the math easy somewhere else. Since 2022, Chicago has watched headquarters walk out the door — and watched its neighbors close the deals Illinois couldn't.
Global HQ: 100 N. Riverside Plaza → Arlington, VA. ~400–500 employees. Stated reason: "proximity to our customers and stakeholders." The trophy HQ Chicago won from Seattle in 2001 — lost 21 years later.
Global HQ: 131 S. Dearborn (30+ years) → Miami. ~1,000 employees. Reasons cited: "Florida's business-friendly climate and tax advantages, and concerns about rising crime rates." Ken Griffin, April 2022: "If people aren't safe here, they're not going to live here. I've had multiple colleagues mugged at gunpoint."
HQ → Miami, same announcement. Doubled the financial-sector blow — hedge fund and one of the world's largest market makers, undercutting Chicago's trading-capital claim.
Global HQ: Deerfield → Irving, TX. ~230 employees. "In the best strategic interest of the company" — notably with no Texas incentives. A 97-year Illinois institution, gone.
West Loop + Downers Grove → Springdale, AR. ~500 Illinois office workers; 228 later laid off. "Bringing our talented corporate team together under one roof." The sixth major company to exit Illinois in 2022 alone.
HQ: Lake Forest → metro Detroit. Several hundred employees. Reason: proximity to auto customers. An $18B supplier choosing Detroit over the Chicago suburbs.
HQ: Riverwoods → McLean, VA via Capital One's $35.3B acquisition. 1,748 Illinois positions eliminated per WARN filings. The biggest post-2022 departure — the exodus didn't stop with 2022's headlines.
Global HQ: 500 W. Madison St → Antioch, TN. 600+ employees per local reports; the company's own SEC filings confirm the corporate HQ moved during 2024. An auto-parts Fortune 500 that quietly finished what its 2022 divisional move started.
US HQ → Miami, four months after the mayor attended its Chicago ribbon-cutting. Then Chapter 11. Civic-due-diligence shorthand.
Chicago made the final 20 of 238 bids — then lost to Arlington, VA and Queens: 50,000 jobs, $5B investment. Even a ~$2B incentive package couldn't overcome what Amazon actually weighted.
No deal is done. Hammond, Indiana is the team's stated "sole focus" (board-approved; Indiana created a stadium authority in weeks). Arlington Heights stays in play — Goodell kept the door open in September, and the team is quietly talking to Illinois leadership. Stakes: $5B+ investment, 56,500 construction jobs (Bears-commissioned). The blocker is Springfield: two stadium bills died in the 2026 session while Indiana moved.
Chose Chicago for the Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park at South Works — America's first utility-scale quantum computer. 150+ jobs, $500M state commitment. Won on ecosystem (national labs + research universities), not incentives — exactly what crime, taxes, and dysfunction erode.
Sources: Boeing/AP · Citadel/Reuters · Caterpillar · Tyson/AP · Capital One/Discover · LKQ 2024 10-K · Amazon HQ2/AP · PsiQuantum
February 23, 2027 — with a runoff April 6 if nobody cracks 50%.
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