New voter registrations in Presidential election years are higher than other years, often with a huge surge before the filing deadline.
A voter file from the Kansas Secretary of State on Friday shows almost 100,000 new voters have registered this year. Historical data show there will likely be 100,000+ more registering before the deadline, which is Oct. 15.
Statewide
The plot below shows the cumulative 2024 voter registrations by political party.
If you start counting newly registered voters on Jan. 1, 2024, and plot the total number registered for the year each day you would see the black line above. This is a “running total” or cumulative total of registrations.
If you count the new registrations by political party starting on Jan.1, you would see the blue line for Democrats, the red line for Republicans, the grey line for unaffiliated (Independent) voters, and the yellow line for Libertarians.
Not shown are the 1487 No Labels Kansas Party voters, and the 103 United Kansas Party voters. If plotted, the No Labels Party line would be below the nearly horizontal Libertarian line, which represents 1770 new Libertarians.
But does this state plot reflect all areas of Kansas?
Congressional Districts
The state plot above qualitatively is similar to plots below for the KS-01 and KS-04 congressional districts with Republican registrations higher than unaffiliated, which are higher than Democratic registrations.
In the KS-03 congressional district, unaffiliated voter registrations are slightly ahead of Republican registrations, which are above Democratic registrations.
KS-02 shows a near tie between unaffiliated and Republican registrations.
Selected Counties
Johnson and Sedgwick County voter registration plots reflect the numbers shown for their respective KS-03 and KS-04 districts.
Shawnee County appears to have more unaffiliated voters than the rest of KS-02. Alternately, areas outside of Shawnee County in KS-02 are more Republican than unaffiliated.
Douglas and Wyandotte Counties historically have been the most Democratic counties in the state. Douglas County shows nearly a tie in new Democratic party and unaffiliated registrations.
Wyandotte County (not shown) has many more new unaffiliated voters (1859) than Democrats (1192). Republicans were a distant third (890).
What is Sedgwick County’s secret for voter registration? Sedgwick County registrations (32,311) were more than twice Johnson County (15,212), which has a slightly larger population.
Gender Parity?
Recent Watchdog articles show …
- Kansas has 90,000 more female voters than male voters.
- The Kansas Democratic Party was even more skewed by gender with over 105,00 more females than males.
The 2024 voter registrations show a nearly 5000 voter increase in female voters in Kansas.
Comparisons Among Election Years
The total cumulative registration black lines in the plots above show the cumulative voter registrations for 2024 through Sept. 6.
What might we expect for new voter registrations between now and the Nov. 5 election on that plot?
The plot below shows historical cumulative voter registrations for years 2012 through 2023.
The Presidential election years 2012, 2016 and 2020 (purple lines below) show an increasing total number of registrations every election. The presidential year lines are generally above the gubernatorial lines, which are above the local lines.
There was a larger increase in registrations from 2016 to 2020 than what was seen from 2012 to 2016.
If 2024 is like past years, there will likely be somewhere between 200,000 to 225,000 new registrations by election day. But voter enthusiasm this year is hard to gauge.
But the 2024 numbers might not exceed the 2020 voter registration numbers. Why?
In full year 2020 there were about 243,000 newly registered voters with about 215,000 by election day.
This 243,000 number gives context to the 277,000 voter registration forms Gov. Laura Kelly orchestrated to be mailed in 2020, most likely starting in Sept. 2020. Gov. Kelly mailed out more voter registration forms in 2020 than the number of registered voters in the entire year!
The voter registration levels for 2012, 2016 and 2012 were about the same at the start of Sept. in those years. The 2020 voter registrations then accelerated more rapidly than in 2012 or 2016, possibly due to the 277,000 forms Gov. Kelly had mailed.
Many of these 277,000 voter registration forms were likely not returned, but if only a fraction were returned, that might explain the final steep push in the plot before the 2020 election (shown between the two black marks in the plot above).
With this special huge mailing from 2020 not occurring this year, the 2024 numbers may be about the same as 2020 — or possibly slightly lower.
Can readers offer an explanation for why gubernatorial year 2014 registrations were so low?
One explanation might be the large influx of progressive money into Kansas after the 2016 election made the “old normal” 2014 gubernatorial year voter registration scale “obsolete” with all subsequent years on a different, higher scale.
Who still may not be registered?
The US Census gives estimates for the number of people by age interval and gender.
The plot below shows male and female voter counts by age interval. The thick black lines above each age-gender bar is the census estimate for the number of people.
The gap between the pink or blue bar and the black lines represents people eligible to vote (if they are citizens).
So, this diagram suggests there are many from 18-65, who are not registered to vote.
But, for most ages 65+ there are more registered to vote than the census says there are people. This voter bloat problem is present in all 50 states and needs to be addressed by new federal checks and balance. New state laws could help.
Related
 | Demographics of Kansas Voters: Part 1. Registered voters vs US Census voting age populationEARL F GLYNN·JUL 15Read full story |
 | Kansas has over 90,000 more female voters than male votes (Demographics of Kansas Voters, Part 2)EARL F GLYNN·JUL 16Read full story |
 | Kansas Democratic Party has 105,000 more females than males (Demographics of Kansas Voters, Part 3)EARL F GLYNN·JUL 17Read full story |
 | Kansas Voter Registration by General Election Type: Presidential, Gubernatorial, LocalEARL F GLYNN·AUGUST 12, 2023Read full story |
 | Gov. Laura Kelly’s administration stonewalls new transparency requests about her actions in 2020 with thousands of voter registration formsEARL F GLYNN·SEP 4Read full story |
Earl Glynn – Watchdog Lab
Earl F. Glynn is a mostly-retired data scientist, scientific programmer, software engineer and physical scientist living in the Kansas City metro area, and the publisher of the substack Watchdog Lab.
