Ryan

Have tips about misconduct, civil rights violations, or injustices in Evanston, IL, at any of Northwestern's campuses, or in surrounding communities? Email me r.ottignon@dailynorthwestern.com, or contact me on Signal (rottignon.01). I will protect your anonymity.

I have a particular reporting interest in what's going on inside institutions that we don't see. I've investigated policing, surveillance, immigration enforcement, and dark money, and have hawkishly covered the insides of campaigns and social movements. dailynorthwestern.com/staff_name/rya…

Have tips about misconduct, civil rights violations, or injustices in Evanston, IL, at any of Northwestern's campuses, or in surrounding communities? Email me r.ottignon@dailynorthwestern.com, or contact me on Signal (rottignon.01). I will protect your anonymity.

Excited to be cobylining this with Ryan, get ready folks

Orgs: To be clear, you'd be throwing onto the pile already. But I'll never turn you down lol.

...more on this @thedailynu this week. (Orgs: DM me for phone or Signal. I'll keep you anonymous.)

@mattheweadie22 @erichol59443359 Age map here: x.com/RyanInEvanston…

@mattheweadie22 @erichol59443359 Also noting this:

Waiting for precinct results outside of Chicago, but in #IL09, all was as expected Fine cleaned up the more conservative areas in West Ridge, Abughazaleh did very well elsewhere, but Biss won a few lakefront precincts in the 48th Ward (including areas around Loyola)

Simmons and (to an extent) Amiwala both appear to have overperformed in Chicago; it's very difficult for me to see a way for Kat to take votes as she appears she needs to combat Biss' suburban win, and he will very likely take two more in Lake and McHenry.

As polls close, a reminder on data: We're only getting precinct-level data for Lake and McHenry counties. Chicago (incl. 41st Ward) and suburban Cook County are split apart as well. Your maps should look like this.

@AustinHoney30 @rep_favorite I'm expecting the first big push to start a little after 7:30, but the first precincts tend to trickle in beforehand.

@rep_favorite @RyanInEvanston

How long does it take for Cook to start dropping ballots

@admcrlsn Solid perspective. Thanks Adam.

With all due respect to Ryan — who is an incredible reporter who I have relied on greatly throughout this race — I’ll offer a slightly different perspective. I don’t think the data is garbage, I would just take it with a grain of salt/look at it directionally. The composition of the electorate, sample size, and directionality of the crosstabs mostly check out. But important to keep in mind that — in addition to the margin between Kat & Biss being within the survey’s sampling margin of error — we have no way of knowing if this is an accurate reflection of the early vote electorate. Past comparable Dem primary electorates have not been broken out demographically in a reliable way by early/mail vs. Election Day. And even if they were, there’s no great point of comparison given the expansion of vote by mail in 2022 where you can just be permanently on the VBM list with no excuse (your ballot is just sent to your house automatically). And we have no way of knowing what the composition of the Election Day vote will be. So I wouldn’t celebrate or doom too early based off of this.

#IL09: Note that this text poll of 550 EV places both Biss and Abughazaleh, again, within the margin of error (~4.3 pts). From a data POV, it's garbage.

* "Dansplain" is a campaign coining first used publicly by Fine on Feb. 18 at 11:19am. But the dan.splains account profile picture contains metadata showing it was created more than 17h prior, indicating insider knowledge. (The acct claims to be unaffiliated with any candidate.)

#IL09: dan.splains, an Instagram account apparently linked to the Fine campaign,* posted a little bit ago with this image. Perhaps a perfect summary of the hell this race has been.

#IL09: If you'd like to understand the numbers of this district as and after they come in, I and nine other amazing reporters and analysts break it down for you in this joint audio-web story. :)

Marisa and Jack's brief: dailynorthwestern.com/2026/03/17/top… It's based on the above campaign statement and Dr. Wachspress' longer piece on Substack. If nothing else, I strongly urge you to read the latter: cooperativeoverlapping.substack.com/p/a-fuller-sta…

INBOX: In a statement to @thedailynu, a Biss campaign spox acknowledged that then-prof Daniel Biss had an inappropriate (spox: "ill-advised") romantic relationship with then-undergrad Megan Wachspress. h/t the always-amazing @Marisa_G_Ech @jdowb2005

See anything interesting at the Senate, IL-09, or SD-09 polls this morning? Shoot me a DM or email (in my bio). (In a famously anti-journalist move, it's finals week here at Northwestern, so I'll be up until the morning writing a paper :P)