Total number of ballots cast was the most in a primary election ever, with the highest rate of turnout in 28 years.
Moose resident Marian Meyers admitted that she didn’t do all of her homework ahead of showing up to the polls Tuesday at the Teton County Recreation Center.
Meyers, who had been in the books as a Democrat, changed her registration to Republican so she could vote for U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, who she admired for having the “guts to stand up for our country in the face of a lot of opposition.” She was less certain, however, about which other Republicans on her ballot had values and stances that best aligned with her own — and so she left some bubbles unfilled.
“I did not want to vote for somebody who I was not familiar with and educated about,” Meyers said.
Meyers wasn’t alone — and it wasn’t just crossover voters who didn’t make it down the ballot.
There were more than 182,000 ballots cast across Wyoming during early and in-person voting, which is the highest raw count in a midterm primary election on record and the highest rate of turnout since 1994. Roughly 40% of Wyoming’s voting age population put a ballot in the mail or showed up to the polls. There was a 31% increase in Wyoming residents who voted compared to 2018, the last primary election halfway through a U.S. president’s term.
“To some degree, this was a referendum of where people stood on Trump, as much as anything else,” former Gov. Dave Freudenthal told WyoFile.
Largely, Wyoming voters motivated to come out sided with Trump in the highest-profile race: Cheney versus Harriet Hageman, the former president’s hand-picked proxy, who topped the incumbent by a 37% margin.
