Secretary of State Kris Kobach is predicting 18 percent of registered voters will cast a ballot in the Kansas primary elections next week. Kobach says he doesn’t believe the hotly contested races for the state Legislature will spur much voter participation.
“Historically, while those races sometimes become very fierce and very heavily contested with money spent,” says Kobach.
“They don’t necessarily drive people to the polls like a hotly contested race higher on the ballot might do.”
To come up with the estimate, Kobach’s office looked at things like the number of voters who have cast advance ballots.
He says the predicted 18 percent turnout would be around average in the last decade.
I sincerely hope that i am mistaken and that the turnout will be much higher than that,” says Kobach.
“But at this point the indicators that we have suggest the turnout is probably going to be lower than average in the August 7th primary.”
The highest voter turnout in a primary in the last decade was 30 percent in 2004.
