CHICAGO (AP) — Immigration and health care were the most important issues for Kansas voters casting midterm election ballots, according to a wide-ranging survey of the American electorate.
As voters cast ballots for governor and members of Congress in Tuesday’s elections, AP VoteCast found that nearly half of Kansas voters said the country is on the right track, while half said the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Here’s a snapshot of who voted and why in Kansas, based on preliminary results from AP VoteCast, an innovative nationwide survey of about 135,000 voters and nonvoters — including 3,786 voters and 755 nonvoters in the state of Kansas — conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago.
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TOP ISSUES
About a quarter of Kansas voters considered health care to be the most important issue influencing their vote while another quarter named immigration as the top issue.
Margaret Masilionis, an 84-year-old state worker and self-described “proud Democrat,” said President Donald Trump’s rhetoric on immigration is wrong.
“We all came from immigrants, Masilionis said. “I don’t understand how we can exclude people and go to bed at night feeling that we’re fair Americans.”
But Keith Noe, a 79-year-old semi-retired farmer who lives outside the small town of Lecompton, said he wanted to see the border wall built, adding that his views were shaped by living near the Mexican border in California in the 1990s.
“The farmers down there had to shut down their dairies down there because of illegal aliens c