It was lost on no one how close Sen. Bernie Sanders, R-Ky., came to upsetting Hillary Clinton in Kentucky’s Democratic primary on Tuesday. One thing that has been somewhat overlooked, however, is the dramatic decline in turnout from 2008.
In 2008, Clinton received more than 459,000 as she defeated Barack Obama in Kentucky. This year, only 455,000 votes were cast overall for all candidates combined. The 35 percent drop-off in participation could be attributed in part to the fact that Clinton has the race sewn up already. Then again, so did Obama in 2008. And there’s another factor in play here, too.
Kentucky has long been a heavily Democratic state in terms of party registration. It’s worth remembering that the Bluegrass State voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, and that although its presidential vote has become reliably Republican, Democrats have dominated statewide offices there until recently.
But Republicans reached a milestone in Kentucky last year, when their primary for governor attracted more voters than the Democratic primary. It was the first time this had happened in a statewide primary in modern memory, and perhaps ever. This was followed up by the more significant (and seemingly even more unlikely) election of Republican businessman Matt Bevin as governor by an astounding margin, even though he had trailed in polls leading up to election day.
The Commonwealth is now approaching another milestone along this same track. Democrats will soon no longer be the majority party in Kentucky in terms of voter registration. As recently as 1992, 67 percent of Kentucky’s voters were registered as Democrats. As of May 1, that number is only 52 percent, down from 53 percent in November 2015. Surely, both the coal issue and the dying off of yellow-dog Democrats are playing some role in bringing this about.
At this rate, Democrats will be only a plurality party by the time of the 2018 midterms — outnumbered by Republican, independent and minor party registrants combined. And if the trend continues, Republican registrations will finally eclipse Democratic ones a few years after that.
Republicans in Kentucky have a ways to go before they dominate the state. They still don’t control the state House. They just narrowly missed winning two of the seven statewide constitutional offices last year when Secretary of State Allison Lundergan Grimes survived an unexpectedly strong challenge and Andy Beshear won as attorney general in an even closer race.
Still, Kentucky seems to be following the same progression as Oklahoma, another legacy Democratic state, where Republican registrations finally eclipsed Democratic ones for the first time ever in January 2015.
