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Posted on Fri, Nov. 07, 2008

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KANSAS VOTER TURNOUT SETS RECORD, BUT BARELY

Turnout a record, but less than expected

Associated Press

TOPEKA - Turnout in this year's election just barely set a state record, sparking a debate about whether excitement over President-elect Barack Obama was as intense in Kansas as some Democrats thought.

Obama did better in the state than any Democratic nominee in 20 years, cracking 40 percent of the vote. He also won an additional county -- Crawford -- that John Kerry didn't in 2004, along with Douglas and Wyandotte counties. Obama's percentages were higher than Kerry's in much of the state.

Election officials had expected high interest in the presidential race to result in a record turnout, with a surge of new voters helping Obama. Also, as Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius repeatedly noted, Obama has family ties to Kansas.

The secretary of state's office reported Thursday that 1,218,935 Kansans cast ballots in Tuesday's election. That's 5,827 votes more than the previous record, set four years ago.

The number will get larger, because 37,345 provisional ballots haven't been counted. Those ballots were collected when poll workers weren't sure someone was eligible to vote in a particular precinct, and decisions about whether they'll count will be made county by county, by Monday.

But the total potential turnout of 1,256,280, or about 72 percent, is short of the 1.36 million ballots Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh predicted. He had projected voter turnout of 78 percent.

Bob Beatty, a Washburn University political scientist, suggested it's possible to attribute the new turnout record to growth in the state's population.

"Kansas is not a battleground state," Beatty said. "Obama obviously did not campaign here (after the primaries). It's a rather high expectation for people to get excited about a candidate they haven't seen."

Obama drew about 3,000 people in a visit to El Dorado in late January, at which Sebelius announced she was endorsing him. After that, the closest he came to Kansas was Kansas City, Mo.

Republicans, too, questioned the idea that Obama inspired intense enthusiasm among Kansas voters. Republican John McCain still captured 57 percent of the vote, and the GOP recaptured the 2nd Congressional District seat and generally maintained its dominance in the state Legislature.

Christian Morgan, the Kansas GOP's executive director, noted that while Sebelius campaigned for Obama in other states, she didn't lead any large rallies in Kansas during the fall campaign.

"That's what the Obama campaign was all about: public rallies and public displays of affection," Morgan said. "That's why I wasn't buying it. If there really was this big tide of Democrat support for Obama in Kansas, you would have seen it."

But Democrats argue that Kansas did see a wave of support for Obama.

No Democratic presidential nominee has carried Kansas since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and the last Democrat to crack 40 percent was Michael Dukakis in 1988. Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000 received about 37 percent; Bill Clinton's percentages in the 1990s were lower.

Democrats had been enthused about Obama's chances for a strong showing since February, when he easily won the state's Democratic presidential caucuses. Organizers had planned for 10,000 or 11,000 participants, and about 33,000 showed up, overwhelming some caucus sites.

"I think it's evident that Obama voters did show up," said Mike Gaughan, the state Democratic Party's executive director. "When we look at these results, we see the improvement in Barack Obama's performance over what John Kerry did in 2004."

The number of advance ballots was a record 428,772, or 35 percent of those counted so far. Thornburgh had thought advance ballots would account for about 30 percent of the total.