It was an election with one race that held countywide interest — the Republican race for Sheriff —but other than that there were few contested races in Tuesday’s primary, and that showed in voter turnout.
After two weeks of traveling voting centers moving around the county and voting in the Switzerland County Courthouse and on Election Day at the Switzerland County TEC Center, Switzerland County showed a voter turnout of 27.82-percent, with 1,847 votes being cast out of a potential voter pool of 6,640.
There were 1,360 of those ballots cast in the Republican Primary (74-percent) as the sheriff’s race held the county’s attention throughout the process. Many registered Democrats are believed to have asked for Republican ballots on Tuesday in order to vote for the sheriff’s race, which would have skewed the numbers a bit. The Republican voter total of 1,360 is 20.6-percent of the potential number of voters here.
But the surprising figure was the turnout in the Democrat Primary, where just 486 votes were cast — 7.3-percent of the entire number of potential county voters and 26-precent of the votes that were cast.