In all, just over 253,000 Kentucky voters opted to embrace the state’s expanded voting access, according to Secretary of State Michael Adams.
Splitting that number out into party affiliations, Republicans edged out Democrats by about 4,000 votes.
Counting absentee options included mail-in ballots, excused in-person voting, and no-excuse, early voting in-person, nearly 330,000 votes have already been cast.
Adams told Spectrum several factors could drive higher-than-expected turnout this cycle.
"Obviously you've got a 50-50 Senate at a very polarized time, so that's going to drive turnout. Abortion is going to drive turnout. Based on the early numbers of absentee and in-person absentee votes that have come in already, my expectation is that we're going to be above what I thought would be about a 40% turnout. I think we're going to be more like 45%."Secretary of State Michael Adams
Early in-person voting ran from Thursday through Saturday. The remainder of in-person voters will need to line up at their polling locations between 6 am and 6 pm local time on Tuesday.
There will also be more registered voters this time around. Adams says the state saw a rebound of voter registrations, which remained relatively flat in recent years. That number jumped by more than 16,000 during this election season.