The only thing certain about today’s municipal elections in Chicago is that it will settle little to nothing. From the mayoral race to a score of aldermanic elections, few if any of the most contentious races will have an outright winner; they’ll be settled in an April runoff.

But today’s election is the most important Chicago has seen in a generation, with an opportunity to make significant progress in breaking from the neoliberal status quo that has dominated the city’s politics in recent years. Chicago’s 2019 municipal elections are a microcosm of our national politics. The political class is scrambling to cope with a population that is furious about inequality, manifesting everywhere in daily life from commuting to work to paying the rent, but also desperate to continue doing nothing about it.

The latest battle for Chicago began last September when Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced he was not running for a third term. After a mad scramble of twenty-one candidate vying to replace him, the final number of candidates on the ballot is fourteen. Yet despite the enormous number running, the differences between them range from slim to none.