Surely the talk of the town today will be about last night’s election, so Town Talk will stay on that theme as well. After all, there are a few loose ends to tie up. Here’s a look at some of what we know and also some of what we don’t:

• As of about 6:45 a.m., votes in Johnson County still were not fully counted. However, it appears voters in that large, affluent county won’t change the outcome of the retention races on the Kansas Supreme Court.

When you went to bed — or wherever you went about 2 a.m. — all Kansas Supreme Court justices were winning their elections to be retained. The caveat, though, was that a minority of votes had been counted in Johnson County. According to the secretary of state’s office, about 62 percent of the precincts in Johnson County now have been tallied. Every Supreme Court justice is winning a majority in Johnson County — i.e., voters there are voting to retain the justices.

On the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Lawton Nuss, along with Justices Carol Beier, Dan Biles and Marla Luckert, were all targets of massive negative ad campaigns, ostensibly because of their decisions in several death penalty cases, including a 2013 decision to vacate the death sentences of murderers Jonathan and Reginald Carr.
A group called Kansans for Justice, which was founded by victims of the Carr brothers, spent more than $633,000 on television ads alone, according to figures from the Brennan Center for Justice. But other conservative groups were involved in direct mail campaigns as well, including the anti-abortion group Kansans for Life and the Kansas State Rifle Association.

Here’s a look at the statewide totals, as reported by the Kansas secretary of state’s website:

• Beier: Yes to retain, 56 percent (584,629 votes); No, 44 percent (458,358)

• Biles: Yes, 55 percent (574,739); No, 45 percent (462,232)

• Nuss: Yes, 55 percent (571,379); No, (464,111)

• Luckert: Yes, 56 percent (578,150); No, (456,454)

• Stegall, who was not targeted by the above-mentioned groups: Yes, 71 percent (733,502); No, (301,109)

The same groups as mentioned above also targeted Kansas Court of Appeals judges. All those judges currently are ahead — again with only Johnson County totals outstanding — with yes votes ranging from 73 percent to 59 percent. The partial returns from Johnson County show voters there were largely voting to retain.

It appears the effort to remove justices and judges from Kansas courts has failed. That will be very important in state politics as the Kansas Supreme Court issues rulings about school finance.

• We will be watching today whether Kansas politics gets disrupted by Trump’s victory. Gov. Sam Brownback has been named by Politico as a potential contender to be Trump’s secretary of agriculture. Brownback by no means would be a lock for the job, but he has served as an adviser to Trump on some issues this campaign.

We also will be watching to see if Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has a spot in a Trump administration. His name was not part of the Politico article, but Kobach was an early and staunch supporter of Trump and advised him on immigration issues.

• We’ll have more updates coming. Some of them will show up here, but we’ll also be producing full articles on a number of topics. Statehouse Bureau Chief Peter Hancock will be sorting out whether a moderate Republican/Democrat coalition has formed in the Kansas Legislature, and we’ll have more reaction from Douglas County’s residents to Trump’s win, and whatever else develops on what will probably be an active day full of people operating on less than optimal sleep levels.

What could go wrong with that?

• Early on Tuesday, we alerted you to a few numbers to watch in the election related to turnout and vote totals. Here’s a few updates on those numbers:

• Despite setting a record for advance voting, Douglas County did not set any turnout records. Come to find out, Douglas County voters may have just been more eager to get their voting over with than anything else. Douglas County turnout was a respectable 61.1 percent, according to unofficial totals from the Douglas County Clerk’s office. That’s down slightly from 61.7 percent in the 2012 presidential election. It is down several percentage points from the high-water mark of 64.6 percent in the 2008 election. Do you remember that night when a spontaneous parade broke out on Massachusetts Street after Obama’s victory was announced?

• Republican candidates generally aren’t too popular in very blue Douglas County. Donald Trump, however, was particularly unpopular. Trump received 29.6 percent of the vote in Douglas County. That’s notably less than other Republican candidates in recent presidential elections. In 2012, Romney received 35.9 percent of the vote in Douglas County; in 2008 McCain won 33.4 percent; and in 2004, Bush won 41 percent.

A key point, though, is that Hillary Clinton wasn’t the candidate to take advantage of it. Despite Trump’s weakness, Clinton only polled slightly better than Obama in 2012, when he won 60.3 percent of the vote in Douglas County. She fell short of Obama’s 64.1 percent total in 2008. She did outpoll Kerry, who won 57 percent of Douglas County ballots in 2004.

The big difference in the vote totals came with the third-party candidates. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein won 7.8 percent of the vote in Douglas County. That was a far higher total for third-party candidates than in recent elections. In 2012, third-party candidates captured 3.7 percent of the vote in Douglas County. In 2008 it was 2.4 percent, and it was 1.8 percent in 2004. Many folks couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Trump, but quite a few couldn’t see their way to Clinton either.

• Trump was not the only Republican seeing some weakness in Kansas. U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran didn’t poll as well in Kansas or Douglas County as he did six years ago. The Republican saw his level of support in Douglas County drop from 45.3 percent in 2010 to 35.2 percent in 2016. Statewide, his vote totals dropped from 70 percent in 2010 to 62 percent in 2016. But Moran was never in any jeopardy of losing the race. Despite those headwinds, the Democrats weren’t able to field a candidate who could get within 25 points of Moran.

• Certainly Clinton’s loss and the the failure of Democrats to take control of the U.S. Senate will cause the Democratic Party on a national level to have some conversations about strategy. It will be interesting to see what type of conversations Kansas Democrats have. Did anybody else notice this number from a report earlier this month? The J-W’s Statehouse Bureau Chief Peter Hancock reported on voter registration numbers for the state.

Hancock reported that Kansas Democrats have gained only 3,088 registered voters in the last four years. Kansas Republicans have gained about 15,000 registered voters in that time. But more striking is that the Libertarian Party gained 4,111 new registered voters in the time period. The Kansas Democratic Party is growing more slowly than the competition, despite being in an environment where one of the least popular governors in the nation is a Republican and is from Kansas.

What type of conversation will that create among Democrats?