Written by Jesse Brewer, a registered Republican and a Boone County commissioner.
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The 2024 primary election in Kentucky was recently held and if you didn’t vote in it then you are in the majority of the voting populus as the turnouts were not that high; however, they were not as low as they were reported by the state and media.
To drill down and understand the turnout you must first understand how Kentucky election laws work. Kentucky is one of 12 states that have what is called a closed primary, meaning if you wish to vote in a partisan primary election (such as state representative, state senator, governor, county commissioner, county judge executive etc.) then you must be a registered voter in the party for which the primary is being held.
Historically when you look at turnout on the national scale during the midterm elections (non-presidential years) you will see a national average of about 20% voter participation in the primary election cycle; however, during a presidential year you will see that number climb up closer to 30% voter turnout; however, in Kentucky since the primary election is not held until May and the presidential primary is over for both Democrats and Republicans since each party has already declared who their party candidate is, so it would make sense that in Kentucky the number of participating voters would resemble closer to midterm years and they kind of did, well sort of.
The state of Kentucky requires the county clerks to report how many voters participated in the election by casting a vote and how many eligible voters are there in the county and then a simple math problem will give you the percentage turnout. In Boone County for instance there are 112,307 registered voters (this was as of April of 2024) and there were at total of 14,199 votes cast, giving a turnout of 12.64%; however, when you drill down on the real numbers that isn’t entirely accurate.
There are 62,099 registered republicans in Boone County and 32,897 registered Democrats (as of April 2024). You then have another 17,311 registered voters that were either Independent (who cannot vote in the primary since it is a closed primary) or of some other affiliation that does not have candidates running (and typically does not). So, when you remove the people that could not vote in this election you have a possible 94,996 voters, or a 14.95% turnout, but that’s not the real story.
In Boone County most of your local elections are decided in the Republican Primary election, which it has been that way since the mid 1990’s. Taking a deeper dive you will see that there were 11,737 Republican votes cast, out of a possible 62,099 registered Republican voters, meaning that just shy of 19% of registered republican voters in Boone County participated in the election whereas there were 2,462 Democrat votes cast out of a possible 32,897 registered Democrats, for a 7.5% turnout but keep in mind (at least in Boone County) that the Democrats only had a presidential race to choose from (which has already decided it’s party’s nomination) whereas in Boone County you had multiple state representative races, a state senate race as well as the presidential primary.
In summary it is safe to say that the turnout is low; however, if you look at the Republican voter participation in Boone County it is on par with national averages and while I’m not condoning that we should be ok with average turnout I do think it’s important to note that the turnout isn’t as low as it seemed once you drill down on the numbers. Then one would need to compare that to the candidates’ platforms that were victorious and by the margins they were victorious by, and you can get a real sense of the voting population in Boone County and what is important to the voters here.