Emanuel received 55 percent of the vote in Tuesday's mayoral primary. He needed more than 50 percent to avoid a runoff.

Ahead of Tuesday's election, Emanuel’s poll numbers never showed him winning a majority in a six-person field, leading to speculation that the likely result would be a runoff contest for another six weeks. But that didn’t happen: Emanuel received 55.2 percent of the vote on Tuesday.  

In total, 582,494 people cast their votes for mayor Tuesday, representing 42 percent of Chicago’s 1.4 million registered voters.

Emanuel endured a five-month campaign that challenged his right to even be on the ballot: A state law requires candidates to be residents for at least one year of the municipality in which they seek office, and Emanuel had been in Washington (though he retained a home in Chicago). Emanuel survived that legal battle, thanks to a ruling by the Illinois Supreme Court in his favor, which ruled in his favor just as early voting began.

Many in Chicago saw Emanuel as a different kind of candidate for Chicago.

“Even though he was a congressman from Chicago for three terms, he’s a celebrity from Washington,” says Don Rose, a long-time Chicago political consultant. “As much as [his campaign] tried to make him a ‘real Chicagoan,’ the realities are he is a big celebrity and a nationally known figure. We’ve never had anybody like that run.”

Despite a campaign in which Emanuel was the only white candidate in a field that included two Latino and three black challengers, racial divisions did not polarize the race. Emanuel did not campaign heavily in Chicago’s South Side and West Side, areas of the city that are predominantly black and Latino, but managed to obtain the support from many of leaders in those communities.

What helped Emanuel with black voters was a clever twist by his campaign team. Video of Obama praising Emanuel during the latter’s farewell ceremony in the White House, was used in pro-Emanuel television campaign ads, and gave many the impression that Emanuel had the president’s informal blessing.

Former President Bill Clinton, whom Emanuel also worked for, gave him concrete support by campaigning for his former aide in January and hosting a fundraiser.

In his victory speech, Emanuel said both presidents had called him earlier that night to offer his congratulations.

Emanuel also has an expansive network outside Chicago, specifically Hollywood and Wall Street – another edge he maintained over his competitors. Fundraising records show a large share of his donors came from the financial services, real estate, and film and television industries. In total, Emanuel’s $8.3 million bankroll made his the largest campaign chest in Illinois to date.

In the last weeks of the race Emanuel's opponents became increasingly aggressive as polls showed Emanuel pulling farther into the lead. Former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, D-Ill., compared Emanuel to a Nazi sympathizer in the movie "The Producers" (and soon apologized for the comparison) and Chico ferociously attacked Emanuel on one of his tax policies.

This race was a historic one for Chicago. It is the first in 64 years that did not have an incumbent mayor on the ballot, and the first in 22 years without Daley as a candidate. Emanuel will take office in May.