Fewer voters turned out around Kansas City than in 2018. How does your county compare?
Voters around Kansas City flocked to the polls in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s election, with thousands more casting votes on Election Day itself.
Here’s a look at voter turnout rates around the metro.
What was the voter turnout rate in the Kansas City area?
The turnout differed depending on where votes were cast. Here are the rates reported by each local election office.
Kansas City: 38.15%
Jackson County (outside of KC): 56.1%
Clay County: 50.34%
Platte County: 62.18%
Cass County: 49.63%
Johnson County: 54.98%
Wyandotte County: 36.67%
How did Tuesday’s turnout compare to the last midterm election?
Voter turnout around KC was lower in this election than in the last midterm in 2018. Turnout statistics show that urban areas of the metro cast ballots at lower percentages than more residential and suburban areas.
Kansas City’s voter turnout was one of the lowest in the metro at 38.15%. In 2018, the previous midterm election, turnout was 50.2%. In Wyandotte County, where Kansas City, Kansas voters cast their ballots, turnout was even lower at 36.67%. In 2018, the county saw a turnout rate of 51.11%.
Platte County’s turnout rate was the highest in the metro at 62.18%. The county had similar success in 2018, when its turnout rate of 64.72% gave it the second highest participation rate of any county in the state, just behind rural Maries County.
The other election boards were somewhere in between these turnout rates, but all of them saw lower turnout than in 2018.
Jackson County’s turnout rate was 56.1%, down from 59.28% in 2018.
Clay County’s turnout rate was 50.34%, down from 60.88% in 2018.
Cass County, which contains just two precincts of the Kansas City metro area, had a turnout rate of 49.63%, down from 57.18% in 2018.
Johnson County’s turnout rate was 54.98%, down from 59.28% in 2018.
Why was turnout lower this year than in 2018?
It’s unclear why turnout this year was lower across the board than in 2018, but more data on voter demographics will become available in the coming weeks that may give officials a better idea of who didn’t show up to the polls.
Tuesday’s election was the first in which Missouri’s new voter ID law, which requires a photo ID issued by the state of Missouri or the federal government only, went into effect. It was also the first time voters could vote early with no excuse at certain polling places. We don’t know whether either of these changes contributed to low turnout rates.
“Voter participation has been sort of steadily going down in the city and we don’t have a reason,” Kansas City Election Board Director Shawn Kieffer told The Star Wednesday. “We do our best to promote it, and we try to make it as convenient as possible with centralized polls and so forth, but we just aren’t getting the traffic.”
While Kieffer speculated that low turnout among younger residents may contribute to the overall low turnout rate in his election board’s jurisdiction, his office has not yet assembled reports on who showed up to the polls. We’ll stay on this story and share any findings in the coming weeks.
Do you have more questions about voter participation in Kansas City? Ask the Service Journalism team at kcq@kcstar.com.
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