The 10th, on the shore of Lake Michigan at the Wisconsin border, includes the eastern half of Lake County and northern edge of Cook County. To the north, the district's industrial sector, Waukegan and North Chicago, found new life in 1994 when nearby Great Lakes Naval Training Center became the nation's only naval recruit training facility. Most of the district's minorities live in Waukegan, which is about 40 percent black and Hispanic.
Cook County tends to be more solidly Republican than the Lake County part of the district.
The 10th was a swing district until redistricting in 1992 cut out several working-class neighborhoods to the south.