After polls closed Tuesday, former fighter pilot Amy McGrath was leading state legislator Charles Booker, but it was still too early to call the race. Two of the state’s largest counties, Jefferson and Fayette, hadn’t reported any tallies as of 10 p.m. Eastern time. None of the results reported Tuesday included absentee ballots.
Final results are not expected until at least June 30 because of the flood of mail-in ballots that are still expected to come in for Tuesday’s contest. State leaders allowed every resident to request an absentee ballot in an effort to maintain public health during the coronavirus pandemic.
Ben Self, the chairman of the Kentucky Democratic Party, said in a statement Tuesday night that “we won’t fully know the results of today’s primary until June 30.”
Secretary of State Michael Adams echoed that sentiment on Tuesday morning when he announced most of the commonwealth’s 120 counties have decided to wait until next week’s deadline to release their complete numbers, according to The Courier-Journal.
“My office is going to be transparent tonight. Whatever information that we receive from counties, we’re going to provide to media and to the public,” Adams said. “That said, most of our counties have decided as a matter of local policy that they’re going to hold results until June 30 and then announce them. And then we’ll make that available.”
Kentucky’s Senate primary has been in the national spotlight because of the increasingly competitive battle between McGrath and Booker.
McGrath was presumed to be a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination since she launched her campaign in July 2019. She’s been backed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and has more money than all of her opponents combined.
But Booker’s last-minute surge has complicated her path to unseating McConnell. Booker, a progressive, started to gain momentum amid a growing racial-justice movement in Kentucky following the police shootings of two black residents. The momentum was buoyed by a wave of endorsements from Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and two of Kentucky’s highest-circulation newspapers. Booker pointed to the endorsements as evidence that he’s putting out “the right message at the right time.”
Polls conducted ahead of the primary showed a mixed picture. The only public survey of the race showed Booker ahead by 8 points, but internal polling from both campaigns found McGrath ahead. In the most recent poll, both Booker and McGrath trail McConnell by double digits.
So far, the McConnell campaign doesn’t seem too worried about taking on either candidate. A Team Mitch spokeswoman told Newsweek earlier in the week that “neither the self-proclaimed most progressive person in Kentucky nor Bernie Sanders’ handpicked candidate has a viable path forward in a matchup against Mitch McConnell.”
In total, there were 10 Democrats on the ticket during Tuesday’s primary and six Republican challengers running against McConnell.
Democratic Governor Andy Beshear said at a Monday press conference that more than 883,000 absentee ballots were requested across the state. As of Monday afternoon, just 452,000 ballots had been returned.
