especially given these primary elections, typically have lower turnout rates than general elections. it was, in fact, the opposite effect. to put into context how unprecedented these numbers were, in 2018 about 450,000 people showed up for the kansas primary election. yesterday it was nearly double that. that s about half of the state s total registered voters, even some kansans were surprised by that. there were a lot of people last fall that did not believe that the supreme court would overturn roe v. wade. and when they realized that it happened and they were like, oh, i think i need to go vote. so i think it brought a lot a people out the door to vote that wouldn t normally vote in a primary. i m super proud to be from kansas tonight and i feel like my state just showed up and boldly told me they are going to take care of me and my female friends and everyone that can get pregnant in the state of kansas. we are protected tonight. i thought it would be a lot closer.
crisis looks like and conversations about emergency contraception and medical care. kansans wanted to push back and say, no, that s not going to happen here. our doors are open and we re still seeing patient and feel very fortunate their rights are in fact. i m going to ask you guys to stick around, if you could, as we await this executive action being taken by the president any moment now, waiting for him from the white house. of course the president continuing to test positive for covid so that will be taken virtually but nonetheless, we ll be watching that very closely. still ahead, big wins for the big lie. the election liars who prevailed in last night s primaries and what it means for the mid terms. and speaker pelosi s trip to taiwan is continuing but the fallout is continuing. max baucus on the blowback from beijing and whether the visit was worth the risk. first, the state of the domestic
protecting abortion rights in kansas and i really think that does say a lot for november, yasmin. let s talk about what this means further and could play on a larger scale. emily, let me quote you say, the conservative legislature wanted this to be among a small group of voters who generally lean conservative. the plan back fired and they ended up with a vote on abortion only weeks after the fall of roe and people understand that this issue is really unique in this moment. what kind of message does what we see in kansas send to the rest of the country? it absolutely says that you can go too far, and abortion has been used as a political issue for so long. patients at the end of the day are people and kansans saw through that and they trust patients to make medical decisions on their own without government interference and we
the turnout was absolutely stagger. absolutely staggering. it was much more like general election turnout here. and one of the big questions we were looking at from a national perspective, the reason kansas was so important, not just for the state and entire nation and november, how will kansans vote and will this drive voters to the polls? the answer was a resounding yes. i want you to take a listen to just some of the conversations we had last night. we, all my friends and i thought that it was going to a very narrow margin of victory or defeat and so we were just nervous. we ve been nervous since we heard about the supreme court s decision. as a husband, i did not look forward to trusting the legislature to protect the rights of my wife if her life was threatened and this amendment would have effectively given them complete control over that situation and that s crazy.