Kansas went for Trump by fifteen points in 2020. Now the Senate race is competitive. Nobody saw this coming except everyone who pays attention to Senate races.
Deep-red states flip competitive when one of two things happens. The party nominates someone so catastrophically unelectable that even loyal voters stay home. Or the incumbent does something so unpopular that voters decide they'd rather risk the other team. Kansas appears to have achieved both.
Local events. National events. International events. The summary lists all three like a high school essay outline. Translation: nobody knows which specific disaster moved the needle so they're crediting everything at once.
Here's what actually happened. Someone f*cked up the candidate selection process. Then that candidate said something stupid. Then national money poured in because strategists realized they could win a seat nobody planned to contest. Now Kansas voters who thought they'd cruise to November are being subjected to campaign ads during Wheel of Fortune.
The race is one to watch. That's code for close enough that both sides will waste millions of dollars trying to move three percent of undecided voters who aren't undecided at all. They just enjoy the attention.
Retail traders are already pricing in the Senate flip. They've bought calls on companies that do business in Kansas. There are four publicly traded companies headquartered in Kansas. Sprint doesn't exist anymore. None of this will matter by Wednesday.
The technical setup looks bearish for whoever loses and bullish for whoever wins. Groundbreaking analysis. Write that down.
Kansas becomes a battleground and suddenly political analysts remember flyover states have people in them who vote.
Photo by Nils Huenerfuerst on Unsplash
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