How Did Kansas’s US Senate Race Get So Competitive?

Among the numerous surprising U.S. Senate races that have gotten very competitive this year, like South Carolina and Montana, Kansas is one such race. The Sunflower State is one of the most socially conservative and Republican-leaning states in the country. In this open Senate race, Democratic candidate Barbara Bollier has managed to run up the numbers against Republican candidate Roger Marshall. In this post, we are going to take a look at how this race got so competitive.

Let’s start by taking a quick look at the demographics of Kansas. Kansas is quite rural and is located in the Great Plains region of the country. This region’s flat terrain makes it great for farming (90 percent of the state’s land is used for agricultural purposes). The state is very red-leaning, and in both 2012 and 2016, only two counties voted for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton respectively: Douglas and Wyandotte Counties. Both of these counties are located near the Kansas City metropolitan area, with Douglas County encompassing the town of Lawrence and Wyandotte County encompassing the Kansas side of Kansas City (in case you didn’t know, the bulk of Kansas City is located in Missouri, not Kansas). The rest of the state is ruby-red, though the counties which include cities like Topeka (the state capital) and Wichita are slightly less conservative than the rest of the state (especially the western part), which is very rural and dominated by agriculture.

The state has a population of 2.9 million, giving it six electoral votes in the Electoral College, a small electoral prize.

What makes this state particularly interesting is that despite Donald Trump winning by a 21-point margin back in 2016 and Mitt Romney winning by 22 points in 2012, Trump is only leading in the polls here by 6.7 percent this year on the FiveThirtyEight polling average, a far cry from previous elections. That means the state just barely makes it into the likely margin characterization.

This has a lot to do with Trump and former GOP governor Sam Brownback’s unpopularity in the state. Large tax cuts and slashes to government programs have been deeply unpopular, and the far-right Kris Kobach, former Kansas Secretary of State, has been involved in voter suppression and anti-immigration efforts, which are also quite unpopular in the state. When Kobach decided to run for Governor of Kansas, he was so unpopular that the state voted in a Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, over Kobach by a five-point margin in 2018. In addition, a Democratic congresswoman, Sharice Davids, was elected to represent Kansas’ 3rd congressional district in the 2018 midterms, the first Democrat in Kansas’ U.S. House delegation since 2010. Evidently, the Trump-era GOP has been greatly unpopular with Kansans, allowing Democrats to carve numerous inroads into the state.

That brings us to the Senate race in the state this year. With incumbent Republican senator Pat Roberts retiring at the age of 84, the fact that this is an open race is probably the largest factor helping the Democrats in the state. Without an incumbent boost, the playing field for both the Republican candidate and Democratic candidate are level.

The Democratic candidate for this seat is Barbara Bollier, a physician and state senator. Bollier seems like the ideal candidate to appeal to Republican voters who may dislike Trump: Bollier was once a Republican serving in the state House and state Senate, who switched parties in 2018. Prior to the party switch, she was a moderate Republican who supported Kelly’s bid to become Governor of Kansas and had criticized Trump and the Kansas GOP heavily for moving too far to the right.

During the Republican primary for this Senate seat, the top two frontrunners were the aforementioned Kris Kobach and Roger Marshall, the incumbent congressman in the state’s 1st congressional district. Kobach was widely expected to win this primary, and because Kobach was so unpopular, many people supported Bollier in the polls. Ultimately, Kobach lost to Marshall in a stunning upset, and Marshall became the official Republican candidate for Kansas’ U.S. Senate seat.

Originally, when Marshall officially became the Republican nominee, the race was widely expected to drastically shift in favor of him, making the race un-competitive. However, that hasn’t happened.

This is because although Marshall is significantly less right-wing compared to Kobach, he is still a staunch supporter of the president, voting with the president’s position 98 percent of the time. Because in the primaries both candidates faced off in a race to the right, with both constantly trying to prove their loyalties to the President and the GOP, that may also hurt Marshall’s chances in the state.

This has allowed this Senate race to become what seems to be Kansas’ most competitive Senate races in a very, very long time. Polling data on FiveThirtyEight indicates the race at practically a statistical tie, with Bollier even coming out ahead in the two most recent polls.

Obviously, because Kansas is still a ruby-red state at heart, Marshall is the favorite to win, with him having a 73 percent chance of victory in FiveThirtyEight’s Deluxe Senate forecast. This is down from the 80 percent chance that Marshall had just a couple weeks ago. The popular vote margin is expected to be close: 50 percent to 46 percent for Marshall.

Other pundit forecasters are also predicting the race to be a close one. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, The Cook Political Report, The Economist, Politico, 270towin, CNN, and RealClearPolitics have the race rated as lean Republican. Inside Elections even has the race as tilt Republican. And as Election Day nears, the race seems to continue to narrow up.

Ultimately, though, the Democrats do not need to win Kansas in order to secure a Senate majority. However, by winning Kansas and other competitive Senate races in red states, the Democrats can afford to have a few conservative Democrats (like Joe Manchin of W.Va.) defect and still pass important policies. This is illustrated by the map below: the states marked in yellow are Republican states in which Democrats are (very) competitive. If the Democrats could win just some of these, their Senate majority would be much more easily ensured. (The rest of the map is based on my Senate prediction.)

The outcome of this race will be a good indicator of how the Trump-era GOP is doing in traditionally solid Republican states. Should the GOP lose Kansas on the Senate level, it probably indicates that the party needs to change for the better to continue to remain competitive in the country.

Kansas’ Senate race will definitely be one to watch out for on election night.

More state analyses will be coming soon, as I plan to cover other swing states on the presidential and the Senate level. On the presidential level, I plan to cover Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, and Nebraska, and on the Senate level, I also have plans to cover Alabama and Alaska as well. In this series, I have already covered Arizona, Montana, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Pennsylvania, so make sure to check them out.

Check out all of Newshacker Blog‘s posts on the 2020 elections on our 2020 election coverage page.

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