Missouri and Kansas primary elections are a referendum on trust in government
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What is the upcoming primary election and why does it matter?
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From KCUR, this is up to date. I'm producer Hallie Jackson. Tuesday is primary election day in Missouri and Kansas. Voters will head to the polls to weigh in on political candidates and a wide variety of ballot measures on both sides of the state line. But before the votes are cast and the results are announced, we'll take a few minutes to remind ourselves of what's on the ballot and to discuss some of the bigger political narratives and themes at play in the primary. To discuss, our host, Brian Ellison, brought in two political scientists from our area. Abigail Vector is an assistant professor of political science at William Jewell College, and Andrea View is an associate professor of political science at Johnson County Community College.
Let's hear the conversation.
So I know there is someone out there listening who has just not been able to keep up with the news and they want right now to come up to speed. It's a midterm year, it's a primary. Just how important is tomorrow's election really uh when it comes down to it?
Very important and I just wanna say if that's you, it's never too late. You can go ahead and find your sample balance. There's no shame. There is no shame. You can still turn out tomorrow. It's not too late. Um, this is a very important year. Obviously we have big national questions going on who's going to control both chambers of Congress. Um, we have an administration that's widely unpopular at the moment. This is a referendum a little bit on on that administration, but locally there's a lot of big questions too. On the Missouri side, we have some big constitutional amendments that are going to be on the ballot tomorrow. And we have some big questions for Kansas City too. So it's an important election.
It's a primary election, which means we normally see lower turnout than I would love to see. So it's not too late. Um and it's definitely an important one to turn out for.
Though uh Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins at least was predicting a higher than usual primary turnout, uh somewhere over thirty percent. Uh Andrea, what do you think? Uh how why is why is this election do you agree a selection is an important one?
Oh, I do definitely agree. Um, certainly and just to say to plug this, if you're in Kansas, you can still um early vote in person today until noon. So there's still some early voting available for people. Otherwise, voting on election day is also an option there. So yeah, our in Kansas, um, the big thing of course is the constitutional amendment related to the election of Supreme Court justices. And we have several very um highly contested primary. Mary's, certainly with Kansas Senate and as well as the governor. So um I in general I would say this is a pretty big primary. We're not seeing turnout numbers to the level of the twenty twenty two elections, but still higher than twenty twenty four.
Well and of course in a lot of uh sort of the at the legislative level and even at the congressional level, those primary elections are are very likely to be determinative of uh of who is eventually elected in November.
Right, and certainly in Kansas with um I'll just go ahead and say with Adam Hamilton throwing his hat into the ring for the Democratic primary for Senate. Um that has sort of changed a little bit of people's calculus. I was looking at some registration numbers to see where um voter registration's was going over this these last few months and the Democrats have seen an increase in voter registration, certainly in Johnson County, but also in Kansas.
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