What it does

SimKansas takes county-level baseline data from recent elections and applies user-controlled scenario parameters to project vote allocations. You can adjust factors like the national political environment, field consolidation, challenger fundraising, and unaffiliated voter mobilization.

What it does not do

SimKansas is not a prediction. It does not forecast who will win an election. It shows what could happen under different conditions, helping readers understand the political math behind Kansas statewide races.

This preview uses the SimKansas projection engine to examine the key variables: field consolidation, the national political environment, challenger fundraising, and unaffiliated voter mobilization. This is a math exercise, not a prediction.

SimKansas is a scenario modeling tool, not a forecast. All projections are based on historical voting patterns and should not be interpreted as predictions.

The modern-era ceiling

In the current era of partisan polarization, no non-Republican Senate candidate in Kansas has cleared 43% of the vote. In 2020, a Democratic nominee raised $24 million and won 41.8%. In 2014, an independent challenger led October polls by 10 points but finished at 42.5% after heavy opposition spending.

The baseline scenario — a fragmented opposition field with moderate national conditions — projects a result consistent with this historical ceiling.

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The 2022 equation

The Value Them Both amendment in August 2022 revealed crossover potential that partisan elections had never activated. Kansas voters rejected the amendment 59–41, with significant Republican crossover in suburban counties. Three months later, Governor Kelly won re-election by carrying those same counties.

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What a consolidated field looks like

When the opposition consolidates behind a single challenger and national conditions favor competition, the projected margins tighten significantly. The question is whether the gap between amendment-style crossover voting and candidate-level crossover voting can be closed.

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Warning: The filing deadline is June 1, 2026. Until it passes, the field of candidates is uncertain. Any projection made before filing closes carries additional uncertainty.

County Baselines

Each county starts from a blended baseline of four recent statewide elections: 35% from the 2020 U.S. Senate race, 35% from the 2024 Presidential race, 20% from the 2022 Governor's race, and 10% from the 2022 constitutional amendment vote. These weights reflect recency and relevance to a statewide contest with crossover potential. The blended result is further damped — 85% from the model's structural estimate (projector-inverted partisan lean) and 15% from raw historical vote share — to reduce overfitting to any single election's idiosyncrasies. Each county also has a calibrated crossover potential score reflecting its historical willingness to split tickets.

What Each Slider Controls

Field Consolidation adjusts how much of the Democratic vote consolidates behind the independent challenger. At low values, a Democratic candidate stays in the race and splits the anti-incumbent vote. At high values, the Democrat drops out and voters consolidate behind the challenger.

National Environment shifts partisan lean by up to ±5 points and adjusts turnout by up to ±3.5% (with urban counties responding more and rural counties about half as much). A pro-incumbent party environment suppresses crossover voting and reduces opposition turnout. A strong opposition wave increases turnout in metro and suburban counties and boosts crossover rates. The range captures wave elections like 2022.

Challenger Fundraising controls name recognition outside the Kansas City metro. Higher fundraising expands the challenger's reach into exurban and rural counties where baseline name recognition is low.

Unaffiliated Mobilization controls how many typically non-voting unaffiliated voters are drawn into the race. Kansas has ~29.5% unaffiliated voter registration. At the midpoint (baseline), no extra mobilization occurs. At high values, up to 22% of registered unaffiliated voters are mobilized above baseline, breaking roughly 65-25-10 for the challenger, incumbent, and third-party candidates.

How Votes Are Allocated

1. County turnout is adjusted based on the national environment (metro areas respond more). 2. Base vote pools are split by each county's partisan lean, shifted by the national environment. 3. The challenger captures a share of Democratic voters (modified by consolidation, region, and fundraising). 4. Republican crossover voters move to the challenger based on crossover potential, national environment, and fundraising. Counties with a higher share of unaffiliated registered voters see a modest increase in effective crossover potential, reflecting the larger pool of movable voters. 5. Extra unaffiliated voters are added based on the mobilization slider. 6. When multiple factors align favorably, a competitive-race turnout boost adds additional voters who are drawn by the race itself — rewarding slider alignment over individual maximization. 7. Remaining Democratic votes go to the third-party candidate. A per-county Libertarian base vote is computed, and a small bonus may apply in opposition-wave environments (see Libertarian & Third-Party Votes below).

Libertarian & Third-Party Votes

The model estimates a Libertarian vote share for each county using the actual Libertarian results from the 2020 U.S. Senate race. Because the 2020 Libertarian share varied widely by county (roughly 2.8% to 7.2%), the raw rates are dampened to roughly 43% of the 2020 level. This brings the statewide average down to approximately 2.2%, consistent with the historical floor for Libertarian candidates in Kansas statewide races, while still preserving county-level geographic variation.

In a national environment that favors the opposition party, the model adds a small Libertarian bonus proportional to turnout. This reflects a pattern in Kansas politics where opposition-wave elections tend to produce modestly higher Libertarian vote shares as a form of protest voting. When the national environment is neutral or favors the incumbent party, no bonus is applied.

Thirty percent of this wave-driven Libertarian bonus is subtracted from the incumbent's total rather than appearing as entirely new votes. This reflects the observed tendency in Kansas for Libertarian protest votes to come primarily at the expense of the Republican incumbent rather than representing net new voters.

Win Probability

Win probability is estimated using a logistic function applied to the statewide margin, with a steepness parameter of k = 0.45. In practice this means a tied race is 50-50, a 5-point lead yields roughly a 90% probability, and a double-digit lead approaches but never quite reaches certainty — the result is clamped to the range 1–99% so the model never claims an outcome is impossible or guaranteed. This provides a rough sense of competitiveness but should not be interpreted as a precise forecast. The model does not account for polling data, registration trend changes, or campaign-specific dynamics.

Default Slider Positions

The defaults (Field Consolidation 35, National Environment 62, Challenger Fundraising 65, Unaffiliated Mobilization 50) represent a plausible starting scenario: modest Democratic consolidation, a slightly favorable national environment for the opposition, competitive challenger fundraising, and baseline unaffiliated turnout. Users are encouraged to explore the full range of all four sliders.

Turnout Baseline

The model estimates approximately 1.07 million total votes statewide at baseline, calibrated from recent midterm and presidential election turnout in Kansas. With elevated unaffiliated mobilization and a competitive-race turnout boost, total turnout can reach approximately 1.2 million.

Cross-Race Turnout

When both the Senate and Governor races appear on the same ballot, a competitive companion race can drive additional voter turnout. Research on same-ballot effects shows that multiple competitive races increase overall voter engagement. The model captures this by computing a small turnout boost (up to 5%) based on the companion race's scenario parameters. The boost reflects how much campaign activity and media attention the other race generates — higher-intensity companion races produce a larger spillover effect on turnout. This boost is applied to the baseline county turnout before all other adjustments and is separate from the within-race competitive turnout boost described above.

Limitations

This model does not account for: October surprises, candidate scandals, debate performance, ground game and voter contact, third-party candidate strength beyond the baseline and wave-driven bonus described above, differential turnout from ballot initiatives, or polling data. It is designed to illustrate how structural factors interact — not to forecast results.

This is a scenario exploration tool provided for educational purposes. It does not predict the outcome of any election.