Who Will Win Kansas?

According to this article, there is a high probability that the independent representative Greg Orman will unseat republican Pat Roberts as the senator of Kansas. This is an interesting issue to examine because the Republican Party has historically dominated Kansas. The first NBC/Marist poll released on Sunday shows that Orman is gaining unprecedented popularity because the Democratic Party is just as much as unpopular as the Republican Party in the state of Kansas. In addition, the democratic voters who supported the withdrawn democratic candidate Chad Taylor might want to vote for Orman because of their anti-republican sentiment. If we examine this phenomenon under the normal distribution curve, the reason that the independent party is gaining support is because they are able to capture the portion of median voters. The distribution in the two extremists of the spectrum is small, and therefore has no decisive power. Even though the second NBC/Marist poll released on Sunday shows a tie between Orman and Roberts due to the fact that 19% of democrats are indecisive, those undecided voter are more likely to vote for Orman. This is because the independent party is located closer to the left hand side of the distribution spectrum, and consequently there is a higher chance that Orman will receive support from these voters.