Polls close at 7:00 pm CST on August 2, 2022 in Missouri. You can see the results here.
Republican Sen. Roy Blunt’s announcement last year that he would not seek a third term set off a frenzy for his job, with nearly three dozen people in the two major parties filing to run. With control of the Senate at stake, Democrats are hoping to pick up what should be a safe seat in red-state Missouri.
Greitens, Attorney General Eric Schmitt and U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler are seen as the leading contenders in the 21-person Republican field. Others include U.S. Rep. Billy Long and St. Louis attorney Mark McCloskey, who gained notoriety in 2020 when he and his wife pointed guns at racial injustice protesters outside their home. Some Republican leaders worry that nominating the scandal-scarred Greitens could open the door for a Democrat to win in November.
The Democrats are led by 13-year Marine veteran Lucas Kunce, who has never held office but who has outraised everyone in both parties, and Trudy Busch Valentine, a philanthropist, retired nurse and an heiress to the Busch family beer fortune.
Election officials were projecting about one-third of the state’s registered voters would cast ballots. Early morning turnout was “a little lighter than we were expecting” in the state’s largest jurisdiction of St. Louis County, said Eric Fey, one of the election directors there. Absentee voting had been slower than anticipated in the Kansas City suburbs of Jackson County, said the county’s co-election director Sara Zorich.
