News & Politics

Shockingly, Presidential Hopeful Kanye West Did Not Get Very Many Votes in Maryland

The music and fashion star had been approved as a write-in candidate.

West in New York City, 2011. Photograph by Flickr user Jason Persse.

Kanye West presidential campaign hit a sour note in Maryland, where he received a mere 469 votes in the general election. The rap star/designer’s long shot presidential campaign resulted in an Election Day yawn from voters across the country. According to New York magazine, West, who ran as an Independent, earned about 60,000 votes in the dozen states in which he managed to get himself onto the ballot. Even in his top performing states—Oklahoma, Idaho, and Utah—he reached only .4 percent of the vote, while earning a little more than 10,000 votes in Tennessee.

In Maryland, West qualified as a write-in candidate, which means that, although he was not listed on the ballot, any write-in votes for him would be tabulated. One small bright spot for the aspiring politician: among the state’s 25 approved write-in names, West won the most votes. He was denied a place on Virginia’s ballot.

Despite the showing, West signaled that he isn’t done with political campaigning. On November 4, he issued the following Tweet:

https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1323914087340781569

Here’s a look at West’s vote totals in the states in which he appeared on the ballot, as reported by New York magazine:

Arkansas: 4,040

Colorado: 6,127

Idaho: 3,092

Iowa: 3,197

Kentucky: 6,259

Louisiana: 4,894

Minnesota: 7,654

Mississippi: 3,117

Oklahoma: 5,590

Tennessee: 10,195

Utah: 4,311

Vermont: 1,255

 

Senior Writer

Luke Mullins is a senior writer at Washingtonian magazine focusing on the people and institutions that control the city’s levers of power. He has written about the Koch Brothers’ attempt to take over The Cato Institute, David Gregory’s ouster as moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, the collapse of Washington’s Metro system, and the conflict that split apart the founders of Politico.