Kentucky voters turned out in record numbers for the primary election Tuesday, even as the threat of the novel coronavirus pandemic lingered, thanks to a hotly contested Democratic Senate race and an expanded vote-by-mail program, which generated unprecedented enthusiasm in Bluegrass State politics.

More than 1.1 million voters likely cast ballots across the state, Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams tweeted Tuesday. He cautioned that was not an official projection, but if accurate, it would amount to a turnout rate 10 percentage points higher than for the primary four years ago and more than double that in 2012.

The Democratic Senate primary between progressive state Rep. Charles Booker and retired Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath drove voters out in numbers Kentucky hasnt seen since 920,000 people cast ballots in the 2008 presidential primary fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. (Kentucky wont declare a winner in the Senate primary until next Tuesday because of a large number of absentee ballots.)

National enthusiasm around that race the winner of which will face Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Novembers general election and Kentuckys pandemic-driven election efforts drove attention to and worry about the states contests. Fears of rampant voter suppression that would particularly affect Black Kentuckians grew when the state decided to close 90% of its typical polling locations and focus almost entirely on mail-in voting. Critics worried that Kentucky would experience the sort of disastrous Election Day problems that occurred in previous primaries in Wisconsin and Georgia .

The predicted disaster did not occur, at least to the extent of prior primaries. But neither was Kentuckys election a rousing success. Instead, it fell somewhere in between: It was an election that highlighted the potential promise of a robust mail-in voting program, especially in the middle of a global pandemic, but it also underscored mail-in votings inability to fully address the structural deficiencies of Americas restrictive electoral system.

I think if theres anything that we can learn from the primaries, its that people are going to need to still vote in person, said Hannah Fried, the national campaign director at All Voting is Local, a voting rights campaign of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Mail-in voting is critical in responding to the threats posed by COVID, but its not a cure-all.