Analysis of Kansas Advance Ballots for General Election
Statewide Democrats have returned over 9,000 more ballots by mail than Republicans, but overall Republicans enjoy an edge of about 35,000 ballots over Democrats.
In Kansas Advance Ballots were first mailed on Oct. 19 and on-site voting started later in election offices across the state.
Data from the Secretary of State on Saturday show nearly 325,000 ballots have already been cast with nearly 100,000 returned by mail and 225,000 voting in person. Over 55,000 ballots have been mailed out but not yet returned.
In Person ballots have only been recorded in 92 counties. Why do these 13 counties show no in person ballots: Atchison, Bourbon, Cheyenne, Gove, Greenwood, Linn, Neosho, Ottawa, Phillips, Pratt, Rice, Sheridan, Sherman?
Summaries statewide, congressional district and county are shown below.
Statewide
Mail ballots. Over 16,000 more ballots have been mailed to Democrats than Republicans, and over 9,000 more ballots have been returned by Democrats than Republicans.
In Person ballots. Republicans have cast more than 44,000 ballots in person than Democrats. Overall, Republicans enjoy an edge of 35,000 advance ballots cast.
An “upset” plot shows rough parity in numbers of male and female advance Republican voters.
[Here “upset” has nothing to do with elections. Rather, an “upset” plot is a way to show commonality among sets, which is often better than Venn diagrams when looking at multiple sets. See Visualizing Intersecting Sets.]
The first two vertical bars show 80,849 Republican females cast advance ballots, while 78,982 Republican males did the same.
The second two vertical bars show 76,334 Democratic party females cast advance ballots, but only 47,804 Democratic party males did the same. Why is there an apparent imbalance by gender for Democrats?
Vertical bars 5 and 6 show rough parity in numbers of male and female unaffiliated voters.
Did male Democrats not show up to cast advance ballots? Or are there many fewer Democratic men in Kansas than Democratic women?
Here’s the crosstab of party and gender for all registered voters in Kansas:
There are nearly 106,000 more women Democrats in Kansas than male Democrats. Democrat men are showing up to cast advance ballots, but there are not nearly as many as Democrat women.
Congressional Districts
In the competitive 3rd district contest between Amanda Adkins and Sharice Davids, Democrats have been sent 4700 more ballots than Republicans, but have only returned about 2600 more than Republicans. Republicans have nearly a 12,000 ballot edge from on site ballots.
Almost 46% of all in person ballots cast statewide are from Johnson County.
Counties
Here are stats for advance ballots in the largest 15 Kansas counties (by number of registered voters).