Kansas had only Six "Battleground" Counties in the 2022 General Election
In statewide contests 97 of 105 counties voted for all Republicans; 2 counties voted for all Democrats
For about a week after the November election the Kansas Secretary of State reported unofficial state totals with breakdowns by county — and with maps.
Sadly, the final certified results were not reported using the same maps and tables — and county breakdowns. [These unofficial results with maps and county data are no longer online at the Secretary of State’s website, but can be studied using the WayBack Machine.]
The maps show a clear pattern that most counties voted for Republicans in statewide contests. Slightly better maps might show shades of red or blue since each county has its unique mix of party affiliation.
The maps show Democratic Party candidate gains in some counties that finally mattered in the gubernatorial contest, with Gov. Laura Kelly narrowly winning over Attorney General Derek Schmidt.
This table identifies the battle ground counties and their current political makeup.
Gov. Kelly won the three largest counties in the state along with the two Democratic counties, Wyandotte and Douglas, which are the 4th and 5th largest.
Kelly’s victory was cemented by winning the top 5 counties along with Riley, Lyon and Geary counties (the 9th, 15th and 21st largest counties). Kelly won victory mostly from only 8 of the 105 Kansas counties.
Further explorations will be made using voter history broken down by county and precinct — and age and gender.
Except for Geary County, the remaining battleground counties, and the two Democratic counties, all have universities. Additional analysis will quantify the importance of the youth vote in these university counties.
Variation in the ratio of votes for Gov. Kelly’s compared to votes for Attorney General Kobach’s by county (and precinct) may be interesting to explore.
Can readers identify other factors that should be explored in the voter data and election results?
Future analysis and planned articles
The results shown above suggest “extra” scrutiny might be helpful in the battleground counties to understand what happened.
Here are the plans of what will be studied in future articles:
Look at cumulative new voter registrations by week by party statewide and by county in recent years. This should identify any “spikes” in voter registration, which perhaps correlate to known events.
Explore voter attributes (e.g., registered, not registered, active, inactive, party affiliation, voted) “before” and “after” an election and what changed in-between for the August Primary and November General elections.
Create voter turnout curves by age statewide and by county for the August Primary and the November General elections. A breakdown by precinct in selected counties may be useful. Show separate turnout plots by party and gender.
Data sources will include:
Official election results from Kansas Secretary of State. This includes the statewide totals in a PDF file and Excel files with precinct level results. [Precinct data are difficult to work with for statewide analysis since 101 counties have a common format, and the four largest counties have slightly different formats.]
Kansas statewide voter registration files from July 1 and Sept. 15, 2022 and Feb. 13, 2023 purchased from the Secretary of State.
Statements of Vote Cast (SOVC) records from Johnson, Sedgwick and Shawnee Counties showing details by precinct.
This GitHub repository shows sample turnout curves by county and precinct from the Nov. 2020 election. A similar repository will be published for this series of articles.
