2020 United States Senate election in Kentucky
The 2020 United States Senate election in Kentucky was held on November 3, 2020, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the Commonwealth of Kentucky, concurrently with the 2020 U.S. presidential election, as well as other elections to the United States Senate, elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections. Incumbent Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, who had been Senate Majority Leader since 2015 and senator from Kentucky since 1985, won reelection to a seventh term in office. He faced off against former U.S. Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath and Libertarian Brad Barron.
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McConnell: 40–50% 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% 80-90% >90% McGrath: 40–50% 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% 80–90% >90% Tie: 40-50% 50% No data | |||||||||||||||||
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The Democratic and Republican primaries took place on June 23, 2020. As the primaries neared, the president of the National Bar Association accused officials of carrying out voter suppression. Compared to typical numbers of 3,700, the number of polling stations was reduced to 200 with only one in Louisville. Because a large number of voters voted by mail, absentee ballots were not counted until June 30. In the primary, over 937,000 people requested absentee ballots or voted early, a far greater number than usual.
Despite much speculation about this race being potentially competitive and large amounts of money being poured in to try to defeat McConnell, he wound up winning a seventh term with his largest margin of victory since 2002, defeating McGrath by nearly 20 percentage points. He also won Elliott and Wolfe Counties for the first time, solidifying rural Kentucky's hard swing towards the GOP. This was the first election in which McConnell attained more than 1 million votes.