Gwinnett, Walton Voters Go for Gingrich

Gwinnettians as well as Walton County residents voting in the March 6 Super Tuesday Republican Presidential Primary supported Newt Gingrich over other candidates.

With 99 percent of precincts reporting in Gwinnett, the Georgia Secretary of State’s office reported 35,133 votes cast for Gingrich. Mitt Romney received 21,405 votes, Rick Santorum 12,362 votes, and Ron Paul 4,841. In Walton County, the Elections office reported that of the 29 percent of registered voters who went to the polls, 59 percent voted for Gingrich, 19 percent for Romney, 17 percent for Santorum and 4 percent for Paul. In total, 13,675 of the 47,214 registered voters cast ballots.

"The big story here is that there were hardly any young people voting," said Bobby Boss, elections superintendent at the American Legion Post 233 precinct in Loganville. "I've already decided I'm going to get with the high schools and see if we can talk to the students. Maybe some of them are too young now - but at least maybe in a year or two when they're 18 we can get them interested."

Boss said voting was much slower than in 2008 when there were effectively two primaries taking place. Comparisons of the 2008 results with this year's primary county by county can be found on Huffington Post. It shows that in Gwinnett County in 2008 Romney earned 28,956 votes and Paul got 2,180. In Walton County in 2008, Romney got 25.7 percent of the vote with 3,343 votes and Paul got 1.6 perent with 212 votes. Huckabee won the majority of the votes that year in Walton County with 6,171 or 47.5 percent and Romney won Gwinnett with 35.9 percent.

Statewide in this presidential primary Gingrich garnered 47.4 percent of the vote. The former Speaker of the House considered winning in his home state of Georgia crucial to his campaign. Gingrich was followed by Romney with 25.7 percent, Santorum with 19.6 percent, and Paul with 6.5 percent. Gingrich picked up 46 delegates in Georgia, Romney 13 and Santorum 2. According to the Election 2012 website, at this point in the game Romney has 361 delegates, Santorum 112, Gingrich 80, Paul 24 and Huntsman, who is already out, has two.

Georgia voters cast 128,728 votes for President Barack Obama in the Democratic Presidential Primary. The incumbent president received 5,218 votes in Gwinnett County and 326 in Walton County.