We found out who Kansas voters liked during the Nov. 4 election when the State Canvassing Board last week finalized the results.
The canvass turned out just what we knew the day after the election, who won, who lost, that sort of thing.
But we also learned a little about Kansas voters.
Some apparently left the baby in the car, or had a lunch date, or needed to get home to defrost the refrigerator. Or, you could make other crazy assumptions about the people who took the time to vote, but just didn’t spend much time at it.
For example, Kansas set a record in voting, some 1,234,765 voted…for president.
But while that’s a record, some 25,000 fewer Kansans, who were in the voting booth anyway or maybe filling out an advance ballot at their home, apparently weren’t so sure just who should be the U.S. Senator for the state. The total of votes in the U.S. Senate race — remember it? You probably saw TV ads about the bald guy and the guy with a pretty good head of gray hair — drew just 1,210,690 total votes.
We don’t know where they live. But the effect is roughly allowing every Kansan to vote on the presidential race but leaving the U.S. Senate race off the ballots in, say, Sumner County (population 25,256).
It’s called voter falloff, and from the top of the ballot to U.S. Senator, some 25,182 voters “fell off” voting at that point.
Further down the ballot, in the No. 3. spot, some 1,208,272 voters weighed in on their local congressional race. Across the four districts that comprise the Kansas House delegation, 2,418 voters who voted in the Senate race didn’t bother with the House races.
Maybe they couldn’t choose, maybe they left the engine running in their cars or “Dancing with the Stars” was starting and they had to finish up their advance ballot quickly so as not to miss the observations of the cranky judge. Figure, maybe, that the congressional race question was left off the ballots in, say, Stanton County (population 2,404) or something…
Learning a dab about the voter falloff business? Don’t tell members of the Kansas Senate.
In the 40 State Senate districts — OK, seven of them were uncontested races — a total of 982,454 Kansans voted.
That statewide total of votes in Senate races is 252,311 fewer votes than Kansans cast for president. Now, let’s see, that would be about the populations of Douglas, Harvey, Saline, Cloud, Finney, Riley and Rawlins counties just not willing to participate in choosing members of the State Senate.
