Secretary of State Kris Kobach is predicting record turnout in Kansas for the Nov. 8 general election.

Topeka ? Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said Thursday that he thinks Kansas will set three records in the Nov. 8 election, one of which has already been accomplished.

In the office’s traditional pre-election predictions, Kobach said there are just over 1.8 million voters registered to cast ballots in this election, eclipsing the previous record of 1.75 million set in 2008, the last open presidential race.

He also estimated that a record 1.3 million ballots will be cast, which would translate to a turnout rate of 72 percent, the highest rate since the National Voter Registration Act, or “Motor Voter” law was enacted in 1993.

Secretary of State Kris Kobach is predicting record turnout in Kansas for the Nov. 8 general election.

“The best indicator is the flow of advance ballots coming in, and right now we are 80,000 advance votes ahead of where we were at this time in 2012,” Kobach said.

Kobach’s prediction is more optimistic than that of Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew, who said Wednesday that he thinks local voter turnout will be somewhat higher than 2012 but not as high as 2008.

Shew said that’s based on the fact that advance voting in Douglas County has come mainly from people who tend to vote in every election, not from new voters, and particularly not from college students on the University of Kansas campus.

He suggested that many people are voting in advance this year because they made up their minds a long time ago and just want to get their voting out of the way.

But Kobach said he draws a different conclusion.

“I don’t think this 80,000 is just people substituting advance balloting for voting in person (on Election Day),” he said. “Obviously some of them are substituting, but it does appear that it’s probably just a higher number of people going to the polls.”

“Douglas County is a little different because you have the campus there, so it’s hard to generalize from Douglas County for the rest of the state,” Kobach said. “It’s not unusual for Douglas County numbers to be slightly different than the rest of the state.”

Kobach said he used the 1993 benchmark to compare turnout rates because since the Motor Voter law took effect, voter registration spiked nationwide because people could automatically register when they renewed their driver’s license. But a low percentage of those new registrants actually turned out to vote, which lowered the turnout rate across the board.

Kobach’s office also estimated that advance voting among Democrats is up slightly compared with 2012, while Republican and unaffiliated voters are not turning out at quite the same level as they did four years ago.

So far, he said, registered Democrats have accounted for 31 percent of the advanced ballots, up from 29 percent of all the advance ballots cast in 2012. Republicans have accounted for 50 percent, down from 52 percent four years ago.

Unaffiliated voters account for 18 percent of the advance ballots this year, compared with 19 percent in 2012.

But Republicans and unaffiliated voters account for nearly all of the increase in registration this year, while registration among Democrats is down from 2008 and relatively flat since 2012.

Democrats have gained only 3,088 voters in the last four years, and their numbers are down by 35,265 since the 2008 election.

In contrast, the Republican Party has gained 14,987 voters since 2012 and 34,943 since the 2008 election.

There are 20,149 more unaffiliated voters than there were four years ago and 59,539 more than in 2008.

The Libertarian Party has picked up 4,111 new registrants since 2012 and 5,695 since 2008.