A Look Back At Closest Illinois Governor Election
CHICAGO (WBBM) -- Whoever wins the governor's race, it probably won't go down as the closest in Illinois history.
That distinction goes to the 1982 election between Democrat Adlai Stevenson and then-incumbent Republican Jim Thompson.
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On election night 1982, then-Gov. Thompson went to bed trailing Stevenson.
"They woke me up at 4 in the morning and said, 'You're 12 hundred votes ahead' and I said, 'That's not enough' and I went back to sleep," Thompson recalled.
Eventually the two candidates were separated by about 5,000 votes out of 3 million cast.
The election resulted in a court battle that lasted two months and ended in the Illinois Supreme Court.
"By a vote of 4 to 3, on the Friday afternoon before the inaugural, the Supreme Court said the recount statute was unconstitutional and there would be no recount," Thompson said
Thompson was sworn in as governor two days later.
Thompson holds two Illinois records - winning the governor's election by the slimmest margin and, in another election, by the largest.
