Know Your 2024 Electoral College: Kansas (6 Electoral Votes)

Topic: Elections

Capt. Seth Keshel

Jun 13, 2024

KANSAS

Basic Election Facts

2024 Electoral Votes: 6

Population (2020 Census): 2,937,880 (+84,762 since 2010)

Likely Population at 2024 Election: 3,000,000

Partisanship

Governor Party: Democrat

State House Majority: Republican

State Senate Majority: Republican

U.S. House Delegation: 3 Republicans, 1 Democrat

U.S. Senate Delegation: 2 Republicans

Ethnic Demographics (2020 census)

White: 74.7%

Latino: 12.7%

Black: 6.2%

Other: 5.4%

Presidential History since 1932

Times Republican: 20

Last: Donald Trump, 2020, +14.7%

Times Democrat: 3

Last: Lyndon Johnson, 1964, +9.0%

Presidential Election Characteristics

· Kansas is joined by several other states in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains regions (and Alaska) that last voted for a Democrat presidential nominee in 1964.

· Biden carried just five of Kansas’s 105 counties in 2020, an improvement from the two Hillary Clinton carried in 2016. None of them had more than 28,628 votes in margin for Biden, while the remaining three-quarters of the state west of Riley County is crimson red. Democrat strength is entirely isolated to the Kansas City metro and the major college counties in the state.

· The major moving piece in Kansas’s election picture is Johnson County, part of the Kansas City metro area and an affluent and growing suburban area that had not been lost by a Republican presidential nominee since 1916 before Joe Biden miraculously carried it by 8.2% in 2020. Its continued negative GOP impact is not sufficient to cost the party the state, but it has cost a U.S. House seat.

2020 Review

Official: Donald Trump +14.7% (201,083 votes in margin)

Keshel Revised Likely: Donald Trump +23.0% (294,088 votes in margin)

Trump gained 100,388 votes over his own performance in 2016, a year in which there was a large third-party vote, but the state still inched further right (Trump +20.4%) from the previous election in 2012, suggesting even losses between major party candidates. Despite Trump’s 2020 gains, the largest for a Republican since 2004, he won Kansas by just 14.7%, nearly 6 points less than the margin four years prior. Most notably, Biden “flipped” the suburban Republican stronghold of Johnson County, which had not been won by a Democrat since Woodrow Wilson in 1916. Biden’s gain of 143,318 over Clinton statewide was the largest for the Democrat Party since Jimmy Carter netted 160,134 over George McGovern’s 1972 performance, a 38.2% loss of the state. Johnson and Sedgwick (home to metro Wichita) Counties were the most disparate in my analysis for the 2020 race, which should have gone to Trump by a minimum of 23 points.

2024 Preview

Prediction: Donald Trump >+16% official, >+24% clean

Kansas, like nearly every state that registers voters by party, is inching along in Republican fashion since 2020. Trump will probably once again drop Johnson County but should trim Democrat margins in Wyandotte County with black voters and flip voters among the Latino working class throughout Republican counties. Look for Trump near 900,000 votes, with vote percentages pushing 90% throughout much of western Kansas.

Kansas won’t be as red as Oklahoma or Nebraska, but should be an easy call for Trump, and a pickup of six more electoral votes.

If you would like to sponsor a precinct map for any of this state’s 105 counties, e-mail mapping@goefi.org.

Previous Installments

Author’s Note: Information is power. This report is free for all to view, and I believe the other Electoral College previews will be, as well. If you find this journal useful and informative, please subscribe as a paying member. My travels and mission this year will not be inexpensive, and your support is greatly appreciated. Thank you!