Greetings from the 2024 DNC in Chicago

Chicago may be best known for Italian beef sandwiches, the elevated train and the 2016 World Series champion Cubs. But it's also a champion at something a little more niche: holding political conventions!

The 2024 Democratic National Convention will be the 26th major-party convention held in Chicago. That's more than any other city in America! And it's not hard to see why the city has been so popular. It's centrally located in the middle of the country, so it was easy for delegates to get here by train back in the day (and it's even easier today by plane). And even though it's a safe Democratic state today, historically, Illinois has been one of the most important swing states in the country.

Chicago's first convention was one of the most important in American history: the 1860 Republican National Convention. That convention was expected to nominate William Seward, but supporters of a little-known former Illinois congressman named Abraham Lincoln printed fake credentials to get into the convention hall and delivered an upset victory to Lincoln on the third ballot.

Republicans have returned to Chicago 13 times since, including in 1920, when delegates were deadlocked after several ballots. Party leaders finally retired to a suite at the Blackstone Hotel to smoke cigars and decide on a compromise candidate — the origin of the phrase "smoke-filled room." But Republicans haven't held their convention in the Windy City since 1960, when they blamed voter fraud in Chicago for Richard Nixon's loss to John F. Kennedy.

Meanwhile, Democrats held their first Chicago convention in 1864, but the most famous DNC in Chicago came in 1968. That year, antiwar protesters broke out of the designated protest area, and police violently cracked down on them as a national television audience looked on in horror. The riot highlighted Democratic divisions over Vietnam and contributed to a sense of abnormalcy in the country that helped finally propel Nixon to the White House.

The 1968 DNC put the kibosh on Chicago as a convention destination for a while. The only major-party convention that the city has hosted since was the 1996 DNC, where Democrats renominated Bill Clinton at an event that was meant to turn the page from 1968. Democrats' decision to return to the Windy City here in 2024 could be a sign that Chicago is finally putting the ghosts of 1968 behind it.