Only 31 percent of Kentucky’s registered voters expected to elect the next governor
Only about three of every 10 registered voters in Kentucky will take time to vote Tuesday to elect Kentucky’s governor for the next four years, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes said Wednesday.
Grimes officially projected about 31 percent of the 3,451,537 million people registered to vote in Kentucky will cast a ballot on Election Day.
That’s slightly above the 30.7 percent voter turnout in the 2015 general election, when Republican Matt Bevin defeated Democrat Jack Conway to become Kentucky’s top elected official.
This fall, Bevin is seeking another four-year term while Attorney General Andy Beshear, a Democrat, is trying to oust him in what political observers see as an extremely tight race.
Also on the ballot are elections for attorney general, auditor, treasurer and agriculture commissioner. The nominees for lieutenant governor are slated with the gubernatorial nominees.
Beshear, greeting an enthusiastic crowd Wednesday morning at the Heine Brothers Coffee shop on Bardstown Road in Louisville as he started another day on the campaign trail, said he thinks voters are energized.
“All across Kentucky we see people ready to get out and not only vote but to volunteer,” he said. “We have had over 1,000 separate volunteers helping to knock on more than 900,000 doors and in the last days of the campaign we are going to have 3,000. That shows the type of energy we got and why we are going to win
Bevin, after receiving an award from a gun rights group in the Capitol Wednesday afternoon, told reporters that the turnout for a gubernatorial race is generally between 30 and 40 percent. Whether that hurts or helps him “depends on who they are,” he said with a smile.
He said he knows the people of Kentucky are happy because they soon “will no longer have to keep listening to those same, written-down sound bites” from his opponent.
Bevin also is counting on visits to Kentucky in the last days of the campaign from President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to help energize his supporters. Trump is scheduled to hold a rally for Bevin Monday night in Lexington’s Rupp Arena and Pence is to visit southeastern Kentucky Friday.
Beshear was traveling Wednesday to Hazard, London and Richmond before returning to Louisville for a union rally. Accompanying him in Louisville were all the Democratic nominees for constitutional offices except Greg Stumbo, who is running for attorney general, and Robert Conway of Scott County, who is the party nominee for agriculture commissioner.
Beshear said state House Minority Floor Leader Rocky Adkins of Sandy Hook, who lost to Beshear in the May Democratic gubernatorial primary election, will campaign with him in Eastern Kentucky.
Bevin had two news conferences scheduled Wednesday in Frankfort.
Grimes, who is not seeking re-election because of term limits, said she was disappointed in the projected voter turnout.
“It’s simply not OK that only a small portion of Kentuckians will possibly elect our next constitutional officers,” she said. “Our democracy depends on people showing up to the polls to make their voices heard. I challenge all registered voters to get up, get out and get loud and exercise their right to vote on Tuesday.”
Grimes tracks absentee ballot totals as an indicator of final voter turnout.
As of Monday, nearly 19,318 voters had voted in person on machines in county clerks’ offices or were sent absentee ballots, she said. About 8,169 of the 13,967 mail-in absentee ballots that have been issued had been returned.
Grimes also encouraged voters to prepare to vote Tuesday by checking their polling places and viewing sample ballots at GoVoteKY.com.
This story was originally published October 30, 2019 at 1:16 PM.
