LINK nky (May 20, 2026): 2026 NKY voter turnout hits levels not seen since 2020
April polling showed Kenton County as Massie's biggest base. May polling showed Kenton County swinging to Gallrein. The charts in the link above show Kenton County with the smallest voter turnout.
"Leaners" broke for Gallrein, as did rural and Appalachian counties. Boone County went for Gallrein by +10.
That's why Massie lost.
-PJ
You posted a link with more data before I went to post this, but, I bothered doing it, so...
So, just for the record - “kentucky statesman” is full of crap. Let’s take a look.
In 2024 Massie received 278,386 votes
In 2022 Massie received 167,541 votes
In 2020 Massie received 256,613 votes
Those are all November numbers against the Democrat. But what about primaries in those years:
In 2024 Massie received 39,929 votes of 52,593 total votes cast in the Republican primary
In 2022 Massie received 50,301 votes of 66,874 total votes cast in the Republican primary
In 2020 Massie received 68,591 votes of 84,683 total votes cast in the Republican primary
Massie was uncontested the three primaries before that. Pretty clear, right? Massie had either no opponent or no serious opponent in the Republican primaries for cycle after cycle and as a result participation in Republican primaries went down, year after year after year.
But what happened this year?
Ed Gallrein received 57,822 votes
Thomas Massie received 47,539 votes
105,539 votes total.
So,the total number of votes wasn’t hugely bigger than in 2020, with a not-at-all serious challenger that year. But what happened that was different this year? A very serious challenger (obviously) and Trump publicized the crap out of the election. To boot, as Massie’s fans repeated time and time again - spending in this election was absolutely unprecendented - ON BOTH SIDES. All spending by Gallrein and independent spending in support of Gallrein definitely bested Massie - but much less than 2x - and Massie and independent spending in support of Massie eclipsed any money ever spent by Massie or any other candidate in any other election in that district. So - to repeat that - in all of the election history of this district, spending for Gallrein was #1 all-time and spending for Massie was #2 all-time.
Massie got nearly as more votes on Tuesday than he got in the 2024 primary and nearly as many votes as he got in the 2022 primary. And that’s on top of the fact that while he still had a solid base in his district, he really pissed a lot of people off going after Trump and with all of his recent anti-semitic rhetoric. But the total primary votes are less than half of Republican votes cast in the average of the last three general elections, so it’s not some unimaginable number by the remotest stretch of the imagination. There was national press and a crapload of money focused on this election - so participation was up - SHOCKER!
Massie made his bed - now he’s sleeping in it. But there’re no Jews hiding under his bed.