Kansas Upheld Abortion Rights And Other Key Updates From The Aug. 2 Elections

To give you a sense for how insane turnout was for Kansas’s abortion referendum: Almost 243,000 votes have been counted so far in Johnson County, Kansas, the state’s most populous county. That’s almost as many as Johnson County cast for governor in the 2018 general election: almost 271,000.

For now, Karrin Taylor Robson leads in the GOP race for Arizona governor, with 49 percent of the vote, over Kari Lake, with 40 percent of the vote. This is another intriguing pairing and a bit of a referendum on the election denial tactic. Lake has been a vocal proponent of Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, even challenging her fellow candidates at a debate to raise their hand if they believe the U.S. had “a corrupt, stolen election” in 2020. Robson, who has avoided sharing her thoughts on the legitimacy of the election, refused to raise her hand. Lake later criticized Robson for not raising her hand and saying the election was stolen, calling it “disqualifying.” So it will be worth seeing how this race shakes out, but keep in mind Lake will likely get a boost from election day votes later in the night.

We’ve got about half the vote counted in Washington, and Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat, is leading the all-party field with 54 percent of the vote. Republican Tiffany Smiley is next with 32 percent. The two will almost certainly face off in the fall, in a “reach” race for Republicans looking to take back the Senate.