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Primary turnout was 18.55 percent, with 4,182 of Lumpkin’s 22,544 registered voters participating in absentee, advance or election day voting.
By Keith Murden & Dave Williams / The Nugget & Capitol Beat News ---------- Lumpkin County voters made their voices heard in last Tuesday’s Presidential Preference Primary, with 87.4 percent of Republican balloters choosing former President Donald Trump and 91.4 percent of Democratic voters selecting incumbent President Joe Biden as their parties’ respective 2024 candidates. Those totals varied by only a few points from the overall statewide results. With 158 out of 159 counties reporting, Biden had secured 95.19 percent of the Democratic vote in Georgia, while Trump received 84.45 percent of Republican support.
Georgia’s results, combined with election returns from Mississippi, Washington and Hawaii, were enough to push both Biden and Trump over the delegate thresholds needed to officially become their parties’ presumptive nominees.
So far Biden has accumulated 2,107 pledged delegates of the 1,968 needed for the Democratic nomination, while on the Republican side, Trump has earned 1,241 of the 1,215 delegates required.
Elections Manager Robin McIntosh told The Nugget that the primary process in the county “went very smoothly,” with no equipment issues or failures to report.
Local turnout for the primary came in at 18.55 percent, with 4,182 of the County’s 22,544 registered voters participating in either absentee, advance or Election Day voting.
When asked how those numbers compare to past Presidential Preference Primaries in Lumpkin, McIntosh noted that the circumstances of each election vary greatly.
“So for 2020, it’s a little harder to compare the numbers because the circumstances were very different. Voting for the PPP was actually stopped about halfway through due to COVID and was resumed later, and when it was resumed, the ballot was combined with the local primary which included the hotly contested Sheriff’s race,” McIntosh said.
According to unofficial results provided by the election office, the 2020 PPP saw local turnout of approximately 41.5 percent, while the turnout for the 2016 PPP was 52 percent.
PARTY PICKS
A total of 3,750 of the County’s registered voters, or 16.63 percent, requested a Republican ballot in the open primary.
Among those who selected a Republican ballot, 3,277 picked Trump. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley came in second in the contest with 384 votes, or 10.2 percent, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis netted 50 votes, or 1.3 percent, for a distant third place finish.
While there were a total of eleven names on the Republican ballot, most of those candidates had formally bowed out of the race by the time it was Georgians’ turn to vote. Haley was the latest to suspend her campaign following Super Tuesday, in which she lost 14 out of the 15 contests to Trump.
Meanwhile, 432 of the registered voter pool, or 1.92 percent, chose a Democrat ballot. Among that group, 395 selected Biden as their preference, while 18 chose self-help author Marianne Williamson and 16 picked Minnesota Congressman Dean Williams.
LOOKING TO NOVEMBER
With the final outcome of the presidential primaries and caucuses already determined, the two presumptive nominees can largely ignore opponents from their own parties and focus their campaign efforts squarely on each other ahead of the contentious November general election.
The victories also allow the two candidates to consolidate and effectively coordinate support for their campaigns from within their respective national committees.
The end of this 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.