Nonpartisan Polling Firm Says Low Voter Turnout Impacted Oklahoma’s General Election

A nonpartisan polling agency stated low voter turnout impacted the gubernatorial race the place incumbent Kevin Stitt received by almost 160,000 votes.

SoonerPoll, which manufacturers itself as Oklahoma’s solely unbiased, nonpartisan public opinion polling agency, stated its pre-election polling indicated Stitt’s Democratic challenger, Pleasure Hofmeister, held an edge.

“She was wanting actually good, getting 95% of Democrat votes,” SoonerPoll founder Invoice Shapard stated. “She was getting 80% of unbiased votes, and amongst Republicans, she was getting a mean of anyplace between 15 and 22%.”

In the end, Stitt obtained 638,910 complete votes (55.45%), in contrast with Hofmeister’s 481,396 votes (41.78%). The margin of victory was 157,514 votes in favor of the incumbent.

“I do not assume anyone may have predicted that Democrats and Independents would sit at residence as a lot as they did,” Shapard stated. “The distinction is that we had a normalized turnout of Republicans and a depressed turnout of Democrats and Independents.”

Based on the state, there have been 2,295,906 registered voters in Oklahoma as of Nov. 1, together with 1,175,253 registered Republicans, 687,545 registered Democrats, 413,328 registered Independents, and 19,780 registered Libertarians.

The statewide turnout for Tuesday’s election was simply 50.3% of registered voters. The figurwas decrease than the 2018 election when the turnout was 56.15%.

“Remember that Kevin Stitt didn’t get extra votes this 12 months than he received 4 years in the past,” stated Shapard. “Pleasure Hofmeister did not get extra votes … than (2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate) Drew Edmondson received, so there was an enormous portion of Democrats and Independents that did not come to the polls this 12 months.”

Shapard defined a potential motive.

“It could possibly be quite a bit pushed by the truth that that is Biden’s first midterm. The Democrats on the nationwide stage will not be doing nicely,” stated Shapard. “They’re sitting at residence their kitchen desk points and going — inflation, excessive gasoline costs — does not make me need to prove and vote for Democrats.

The outcomes from Tuesday’s common election present the overall votes that every candidate obtained, however there is no such thing as a breakdown on voters by get together affiliation reminiscent of what number of Republicans voted for Stitt or what number of Democrats voted for Hofmeister.  

The State Election Board stated that knowledge probably will not be obtainable for just a few weeks till voter historical past credit score is recorded.