The Oglethorpe Echo
Donald Trump and President Joe Biden were the clear winners with Oglethorpe County voters on Tuesday.
Trump, the former president, received 90.2% of votes in the Republican presidential primary and Biden received 93.8% of votes on the Democratic side.
Of the county’s 10,781 registered voters, 1,592 voted in the Republican race and 308 cast votes for the Democratic race at the three precincts, according to the Oglethorpe County Board of Elections & Registration.
The total of 1,909 ballots resulted in a 17.56% voter turnout. Nine ballots were blank, Election Supervisor Marilyn Huff-Waller said Wednesday morning.
“Overall, voter turnout was low for the primary, but in November, we are in the top 10 counties in the state for turnout,” said Steve McCannon, election assistant.
Oglethorpe County’s results mirrored the state.
Trump received 495,880, or 84.5% of the Republican votes to easily outdistance Nikki Haley, who had 77,737 votes (13.2%) with 96% of Georgia counties reporting, according to the Secretary of State’s election website. Haley dropped out of the race on March 6.
Biden received 274,390 votes (95.2%), far ahead of his nearest challenger, author Marianne Williamson, who had 8,624 votes (3%).
The end of the primary season sets up the first repeat matchup of presidential candidates since 1956, when Republican President Dwight Eisenhower won reelection by defeating Democrat Adlai Stevenson for the second consecutive time.
The last time a former president ran for the White House was in 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt mounted an unsuccessful third-party candidacy against incumbent Republican William Howard Taft and Democrat Woodrow Wilson, with Wilson winning the White House.
Democratic former President Grover Cleveland ousted Republican President Benjamin Harrison in 1892, the last time in U.S. history that an ex-president challenged an incumbent president.
Echo staff writer Abby Peacock and Capitol Beat News Service contributed to this article.