“I don’t know anything about Joe Biden, and everything I know about Trump, I dislike, so you can say I’m voting for Biden because I can’t stand Donald Trump. He has no integrity. He cheats all the time. He never does anything he said he’s going to do. He’s not a man who honors his word.”
- Richard Loveall, 77, a retired computer programmer from Kansas who voted for Trump in 2016 because he didn’t like Clinton. Quoted in the New York Times.
Seems like some voters just vote no. That helped Trump in 2016, but it’s not going to help him this year. When voters approach an election as if it is a referendum on one of the candidates - rather than a contest between the two - and the incumbent president is on the ballot, that’s often not a good sign for the president. If you are thinking about 2016, remember that Trump was not the incumbent then. In many voters’ minds, Clinton was like an incumbent with a long record to complain about. It remains to be seen if it is enough to defeat him, but a lot of voters in every state seem to really dislike Trump. That’s no different in Kansas, as the above quote from Mr. Loveall suggests.
In the past 100 years Kansas has voted for the Republican nominee for president in all but three elections.* Since supporting Johnson in 1964, only three Democratic nominees have even broken 40% in the Sunflower State: Carter in 1976 (45%), Dukakis in 1988 (43%), and Obama in 2008 (41%). In 2016, Trump beat Clinton here by just over 20 points. Clinton received the lowest share of votes for a Democratic nominee since Reagan beat Mondale in 1984.** It’s safe to say that at least in presidential politics Kansas is a solid Republican state. Until this year. Maybe.
Is Biden going to beat Trump in Kansas this year? Almost certainly not, but it does not look like it will be the blow-out that almost every Democratic nominee has suffered in the Sunflower State since the Civil War. Siena College/NYT (A+) reports today that Trump has a seven point lead over Biden in Kansas. The margin of error in the poll is four points. According to the New York Times, “Mr. Trump’s overall lead was attributable to his strength in rural Kansas, befitting a state where 90 percent of the land is devoted to agriculture. Rural voters make up half of the state’s electorate, and Mr. Trump was dominant with them, outpolling his Democratic opponent 59 to 32.”
Of the 34 Senators that have represented Kansas since it entered the union in 1861, only three have been Democrats. The last time Kansas voted for a Democratic Senator was 1932. This year, however, the Senate race is close – closer than the presidential race. Establishment Republicans got their wish in the primary this year when Rep. Roger Marshall defeated controversial former Secretary of State Kris Kobach. But it has not worked like they thought it would. Marshall has faced a very tough race from Democrat Barbara Bollier. The polling has been inconsistent, but it seems like Marshall has a slight advantage. Today’s Siena poll finds Marshall up by four points.
The safe money is on Trump winning the state’s six electoral votes and Marshall winning the open Senate seat. Even so, this has not been the kind of election year in Kansas that Republicans expected. The GOP has had to spend money in Kansas that should have gone to defending seats in Arizona, Colorado, and Maine. The GOP brand in the Sunflower State appears to have taken a serious hit from the Trump presidency. But that’s not all. As in other historically reliable GOP states, demographic change is afoot in Kansas. The population in rural areas is aging, while younger and better educated folks are moving into metropolitan areas such as Kansas City, Wichita, and Lawrence. Urban areas are slated to double in size or more while rural areas are looking at a projected 32% population decline over the next few decades.
The Kansas City metropolitan area is currently represented in the House by Democrat Sharice Davids, who maintains a double-digit lead over her Republican opponent in the few polls available in that race. Davids has one of the more interesting backgrounds in Congress. She is an attorney and was a professional mixed martial arts fighter for a brief time. She is the first openly gay member of Congress from Kansas and one of only two Native Americans in the House. Davids was first elected in 2018 when she beat the GOP incumbent by nine points. She is only the fifth Democrat elected in the Third District since its creation in 1875 (and one of them only served one two-year term).
The other three Congressional districts in Kansas are occupied by Republicans and it is likely to stay that way this year. Changes are coming to the Sunflower State, but the demographic change is happening slowly and the odds that Kansas will be a regular battleground state anytime soon are slim. But the change can happen quicker than expected – particularly if young folks in rural areas reject the region’s conservative politics. Although five of the last nine governors have been Democrats,*** even if Biden can win here this year or if Bollier pulls off an upset (more likely, but still unlikely), chances are Republicans will be the party to beat in Kansas for the next decade or more.
Today’s numbers:
Polling Averages
FiveThirtyEight: Biden +9.8
The Upshot: Biden +9.0****
Real Clear Politics: Biden +7.9
Forecasts
FiveThirtyEight (probabilities of winning EC): Biden 87%, Trump 12%
The Economist (probabilities of winning EC): Biden 93%, Trump 7%
The Upshot (probable EV totals): Biden 357 EVs, Trump 181 EVs
Total Early Votes: 47,664,552
Mail Ballots: 33,285,373
In-Person Votes: 14,379,179
* Kansas voted for FDR in 1932 and 1936 and for LBJ in 1964. If we look back to 1864, the first presidential election year in which Kansas was a state, the Republican nominee only lost four other times (include twice for Wilson in 1912 and 1916 and once to former Republican turned Populist Party nominee James Weaver in 1892).
** Bill Clinton actually had a lower share in 1992, but the vote that year was closely split three ways between Clinton, Bush, and Perot making each candidate’s vote share a little deceptive when looked at individually.
*** Only three Democrats have been elected governor in Massachusetts since the 1960s and one of them, Ed King, was essentially a Republican. Despite this no one would consider the Bay State a presidential (or Senate) battleground state.
**** The Upshot rounds its averages. Since the most recent change was from +10 to +9, and since The Upshot uses polling data compiled by FiveThirtyEight, it is safe to assume that they round down to the nearest whole number.