In Chicago, it’s no longer enough to know simply who won an election. Changing constituencies and racial and ethnic voting patterns now seem as de rigueur to post-election analyses as bottom-line ballot counts.

Almost certain to become a standard reference for such analyses is a slim new paperback resulting from a year-long collaboration by staffs of the research and planning department of the Chicago Urban League and the Social Science Research Institute at NIU.

“Chicago Politics 1990” was developed as a joint CUL/NIU atlas under the supervision of Paul Kleppner, director of the NIU institute, and D. Garth Taylor, former director of research and planning for the CUL.

As noted by Kathleen Frankovic, director of surveys for CBS News, the 69-page study of voting trends is “invaluable for anyone who wants to understand Chicago and Cook County politics.”

Adds University of Chicago political science Professor Gary Orfield, “the atlas deals with the geography of race and the political implications of racial polarization or cross-racial coalitions in a calm, factual and highly informative manner. Its graphs and graphics are unusually clear and convey the essential information with great effectiveness.”

Available for $23 per copy, the atlas includes both Cook County Township and Chicago ward electorates, votes for governor, for president, for mayor and other posts, as well as the voting coalitions for the late Mayor Harold Washington, for current Mayor Richard M. Daley and for Jesse Jackson in the 1988 presidential primary.

In maps, tables and texts, it provides data on trends in voting age, population, racial and ethnic characteristics on the voting age population, registration and turnout races by race and ethnicity. It also answers questions about candidate support by racial and ethnic group.

Additionally, the atlas provides a longer-term view of the changing mixture of groups within the city and the changing demographic and political balance between Chicago and its nearby suburbs in Cook County.

Of special interest are the analyses of a number of city and county races in which minority candidates ran against white candidates. A final section uses simulation models to suggest possible future city and county trends.

A nationally-recognized specialist on voting behaviors and patterns, Kleppner is the author of the highly-acclaimed “Chicago Divided: The Making of a Black Mayor” and the “Illinois Political Atlas,” both published by the NIU Press. He also is a co-author of the new “Almanac of Illinois Politics—1990,” published by Illinois Issues, Springfield.

At NIU, he also has the title of university research professor of history and political science.