Fewer Johnson Countians showed up to the polls and mailed in ballots in Tuesday’s election than during the last midterm election, according to early data provided Thursday by the Johnson County Election Office.
Driving the news: The county election office says preliminary results from Tuesday show a voter turnout of 56-57%, a number that would put this year’s election somewhere between the previous two midterm elections.
How it compares: In 2018, that year’s midterm election produced a roughly 65% turnout in Johnson County.
- In 2014, the midterm election that year produced a roughly 51% voter turnout rate in the county.
Zooming in: Early numbers also show a continued shift in Johnson County toward the Democratic Party, a trend underlined most prominently by U.S. Rep. Rep Sharice Davids’ reelection by a relatively comfortable margin.
- In Johnson County, Davids won by roughly 16 percentage points over Republican Amanda Adkins and took Kansas’ 3rd Congressional District overall by about 12 percentage points.
- That surpassed Davids’ margin of victory in her previous two elections, having defeated Adkins by a nearly 7 percentage points in 2020 and topping then-Rep. Kevin Yoder by slightly less than 6 percentage points in 2018.
- Davids’ win this year followed a contentious redistricting process that saw the 3rd District redrawn in a way that took out part of Wyandotte County and added three mostly rural counties to Johnson, a move many analysts predicted would make it more challenging for the Democratic congresswoman to win reelection.
Another thing: At Thursday’s meeting, the Johnson County Board of County Commissioners also approved setting aside up to $172,000 that would go toward compensating county employees who would be temporarily reassigned as poll workers in the case of a recount.
- County staff told the commission that no recount of Tuesday’s results been requested, but the funding was set aside as a precaution.
- Johnson County was one of nine counties statewide that had to conduct a hand recount of ballots from August’s primary, after anti-abortion activists raised enough money to request the partial recount of the vote on an abortion amendment that voters rejected.
Voter turnout and beyond
The Board of County Canvassers (which also serves as the Board of County Commissioners) will meet to certify the election results beginning at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 16.
- More discrete breakdowns of this year’s turnout by age and other demographic characteristics will be known after the results are certified, according to the Johnson County Election Office.
