Limits to Campaign Contributions
Limits to campaign contributions vary depending on the source of the contribution and whether the contribution is being made to a state legislator, statewide officeholder, or judicial candidate.
Additional information on limits to campaign contributions in Illinois may be found here.
Filing Deadlines
Candidates are required to file detailed reports on their campaign donations and expenditures. Transparency USA provides accurate, searchable data within a month of its availability.
See Illinois’s campaign finance report deadlines here.
Additional reports may be required by Illinois filers. If a report is skipped (often because its deadline is close to another), the data from that report is captured in the next update.
Illinois Statewide Officeholders
Illinois statewide officeholders (such as the governor and lieutenant governor) serve four-year terms and are up for reelection in non-presidential election years. There are no term limits for statewide officeholders.
Illinois Legislature
Illinois House Representatives serve two-year terms.
Illinois State Senators serve either two or four-year terms. Under the Illinois Constitution of 1970, senators are divided into three groups, each group having a two-year term at a different part of the decade between censuses, with the rest of the decade being taken up by two four-year terms. Depending on the election year, roughly ⅓, ⅔, or all of the senate seats may have terms ending.
There are no term limits for state legislators.
How We Display Illinois Campaign Finance Data
Campaign finance is complex, with reporting practices that vary widely from state to state. As a reporting system — and not a balance sheet — contributions and expenditures do not balance the way we’d expect if it were an accounting system. In most cases, this does not mean that the data is incomplete, but rather, that entities are following Illinois’s unique reporting requirements.
To help put the numbers in context, we’ve created a state-specific explanation of how we display information reported. Click the link below for a more detailed description of Illinois’s campaign finance data and how their unique system is displayed on TUSA: