Now that the results of the 2024 General Election in Lexington are final, we are digging into how Lexington did (and didn’t) vote. If you want to see what changes are coming to Council from this year’s election, you check out this post from last week. While 141,204 people voted in Fayette County, many Lexington residents left down-ballot races completely blank — this is called undervoting. Each time you do this (leave an option blank on your submitted ballot), it is counted as an undervote. This is different from people who are registered but did not vote at all. Undervoting can also happen when a mark is unclear on the ballot, for instance if a selection oval isn’t filled in all the way. Not counting straight-ticket selections, there were 703,131 undervotes in Fayette County, meaning 703,131 votes were left blank amongst those who voted, mostly for local races. Here’s a look at how people voted and undervoted this year: Presidential Race In the Presidential race, 139,708 people voted, with around 40% voting for President-elect Donald Trump, and around 57% of Lexingtonians voting for Vice President Kamala Harris. 3,140 voters cast a ballot for a third-party candidate in the Presidential election, around 2% of all Fayette County voters. There were only 1,458 undervotes in the Presidential election, about 1% of voters. Council Races 98,438 people voted in Lexington’s District Council Races. 42,622 Lexington residents undervoted in Council races, meaning they voted for something on the ballot, but did not vote for a Council candidate. This is about 30% of all Fayette County voters who voted this year. Competitive District Council races had lower rates of undervoting, while non-competitive races had higher rates. District 1 had the lowest rate of undervoting, with only 12% of voters who cast a ballot sitting out the Council race. Districts 3, 4, 7, 11, & 12 all had medium rates of undervoting, with between 24 and 34% of voters sitting out these races. Districts 6, 8, 9, and 10 all had high rates of undervoting, with between 41% and 39% of voters sitting out these Council races. Fayette County School Board 63,655 Lexington residents voted in the Fayette County School Board races As a reminder, not all Fayette County School Board seats were up for election. Over 42,145 people undervoted for School Board, meaning that many people who voted and could cast a ballot for School Board chose not to. State Constitutional Amendments The two constitutional amendments had far lower rates of undervoting than Council and School Board races. Only 8,000 voters undervoted on Amendment 1, about 6% of Fayette County voters. Lexington ultimately voted in favor of Amendment 1, 53% to 46%. 132,337 people voted for or against the measure. Only 3,974 Lexington residents didn’t vote either way for Amendment 2, a little less than 3% of Fayette County voters. Lexington overwhelmingly rejected Amendment 2, voting 72% to 27% against it, the second largest split on the ballot after the 5th District Supreme Court Race. 137,083 people voted for or against the measure. Parks Fund Tax The Parks Fund Tax’s undervoting rate fell in between the two state constitutional amendments. Soil & Water Conservation District Supervisor 63% of all undervotes were in the Soil and Water Conservation District Supervisor race, which only had 2 candidates on the ballot. There were 449,927 undervotes in this race. As a reminder, you could vote for up to 4 candidates. While there were many write-in candidates also running, each time a voter voted for less than four candidates, it was counted as an undervote. For us, these rates of undervoting are a call to provide even better educational resources on down ballot races in the years to come. You can download the full vote counts from the Fayette County Clerk’s website here. The post Which local races did Lexington voters sit out? appeared first on The Lexington Times.