Voters overwhelmingly voted for incumbent Republican Timothy Johnson for U.S. Representative Tuesday night.

Johnson led 87,665-42,995 over Democrat Joshua Hartke in the race for the 15th congressional district with 76 percent of the precincts reporting.

Green Party candidate Carl Estabrook received 3,985 votes or 3 percent.

In Coles County, Johnson earned 63 percent of the vote (9,274) to Hartke’s 33 percent. Estabrook received 455 votes.

Johnson, who lives in Urbana, has served the past four years in the 15th District and prior to that spent six years in the state General Assembly. He was also a professor at Parkland College in Champaign.

“This election was set from the beginning when the Democrats almost decided not to run a candidate against Johnson and give him a free ride back to Washington,” Estabrook said. “But when they decided to run a candidate, then we had to distinguish ourselves from the Democrats and Republicans and that’s very hard to do.”

Estabrook said Coles County gave him a boost.

“Eastern was almost instrumental in the growth of the Green group in the county,” Estabrook said. “We definitely made some progress in a lot of areas and I believe that when the final numbers come in we’ll be close to 5 percent.”

Estabrook said he was unsure about running again in 2004.

“I think the Democrats thought we’d just go away if we got less than 5 percent, but that’s not going to happen,” he said. “We’re here to stay because we’ve got a lot of people behind us. I’d like to see a primary for the Green Party in the next election, but I’m not going to make any decisions about my future yet. I am certainly going to remain active in the party.” Johnson could not be reached for comment.