1980 United States Senate election in Illinois
election
The 1980 United States Senate election in Illinois was held on November 4, 1980. Incumbent Democrat U.S. Senator Adlai Stevenson III decided to retire. Democrat Alan J. Dixon won the open seat. Dixon won in a landslide victory, despite Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan carrying the state in the simultaneous presidential election comfortably.
Background
The primaries and general elections coincided with those for other federal offices (President and House), as well as those for state offices.
Incumbent Democrat Adlai Stevenson III opted not to seek reelection to a third-term. This was the first open-race for this senate seat since 1938.
Turnout in the primary elections was 35.36%, with a total of 2,026,814 votes cast.
Turnout during the general election was 73.51%, with 4,579,933 votes cast.
Democratic primary
Alan J. Dixon overwhelmingly won the Democratic primary.
The public source identifies “1980 United States Senate election in Illinois” as election. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around United, States and Senate.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7891518. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1980 and 1938.
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This entry incorporates text from “1980 United States Senate election in Illinois” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.