It was named after Lech Wałęsa's Solidarity movement in Poland, which was then widely admired in Illinois, which has a very large Polish-American population, especially around Chicago.
Some believe that it simply boiled down to the names of the LaRouche candidates, which sounded less "ethnic" than those of their opponents, George E. Sangmeister and Aurelia Pucinski.
In any case, most analysts, including Stevenson himself, agreed that the whole ordeal confused voters and helped the Republican Party's James R. Thompson win the election.
The "Solidarity Democrats" and the LaRouche supporters blamed one another for the subsequent years of Republican control in Illinois state government.
One such group was the New Alliance Party (NAP), which was largely unknown in Illinois but still managed to run some of its candidates for local offices.