Swain County voters reflected the rest of the country in an unprecedented turnout for the 2020 General Election. Out of a total of 10,088 registered voters, there were 7,080 ballots cast once polls closed on Election Night Tuesday— accounting for 70.18% of the voters.
It was truly a record turnout, noted Swain County Board of Elections Director Judy Allmann. In the last Presidential election year, considered also to have an incredible turnout, there just over 60% of the voters who cast ballots.
With the current health pandemic, many voters chose absentee or early voting to avoid crowds. Statewide, nearly 62.2% of the total voter turnout was before Election Day, with 959,984 coming in by mail and over 3.6 million voters casting ballots during one-stop.
In Swain County, more voters waited until Election Day, but early voting was still extremely popular. Before Tuesday, 53.5% of voters had already cast ballots with 732 by mail and 4,671 by early voting. There are 48 provisional ballots.
The process continued smoothly for Election Day, according to Allmann.
“It went wonderful,” she said. “Thanks to the poll workers, everybody in the office, the board, they all did a wonderful job.”
The county election decided the make-up of the county board of commissioners, with voters favoring to keep things the way they are. Incumbents Kenneth Leonard Parton (Republican, 28.54%) and Roger Parsons (Democrat, 25.23%) got the highest number of votes and thus were re-elected to serve four-year terms. Phil Carson, who served many years previously as chairman of the board, was the next biggest vote getter (23.25%) followed by Republican Robert Lowe (22.18%) and write-in votes got 0.79% of the vote.
On the school board, there were three seats to be filled and three names on the ballot. Incumbent Gerald ‘Jerry’ McKinney (Democrat) and newcomers Cody White (Republican) and Mitchell Carson (Republican) will serve four-year terms on the board. When it comes to the final local race, Swain Soil and Water Supervisor, the name will be known later this week when the Board of Elections goes through the ballots to hand-eye count the write-in. There were 1,168 people who wrote in for the seat. The same is true for the Whittier sanitary district board members (3) with 56 write-ins.
Swain Board of Elections will have Canvass Day on Friday, Nov. 13 at 11 a.m. at the BOE office, and the meeting is open to the public. Provisional ballots will be reviewed and absentee by mail ballots have until Nov. 12 to be counted but must be post-marked by Election Day.
Swain goes red
On the top of the ticket, Swain voters showed significantly more support for Republican candidates. In the Presidential race, the majority of Swain voters gave President Donald Trump an ‘A’ on his report card— with 58.95% in favor of his re-election compared to 39.26% who cast ballots in favor of Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
Similarly, Swain favored US Senator Thom Tillis for re-election at 55.25% and newcomer Madison Cawthorn to fill the seat vacated by Mark Meadows for US House District 11. Cawthorn captured 56.97 percent of the Swain vote.
For Governor support, the results were the same with Swain favoring Republican Dan Forest at 54.8%. Also at the state level, Swain showed overwhelming support for the Republican candidates with Kevin Corbin gaining 59.45% for NC Senate District 50, and Mike Clampitt at 59.07% in the race for NC House District 119.
The only outlier for Swain was when its own Democratic candidate was on the ballot. Justin Greene was favored by Swain by a slight margin (50.35%) over Haywood County Republican Kaleb Wingate (49.65%) for the NC District Court Judge seat 6.
The results
As of press time Wednesday, the race for the United States President has yet to be called with Biden (238) leading over Trump (213) but neither candidate gaining the 270 votes in the Electoral College to be declared the victor.
Statewide, the results were very close between the Republican and Democratic candidates for many races. North Carolina only favored Trump by a slight margin over Biden—at 49.98% to 48.57%. Tillis was re-elected to office with 48.73% of the statewide vote, along with Republican newcomer Cawthorn with 54.52% for the 11th district.
Democratic Governor Roy Cooper won re-election capturing 51.48% of the statewide vote, as did Democrat Josh Stein for Attorney General with 50.1% of the vote. Republicans Mike Causey for Insurance Commissioner, Dale Folwell for Treasurer and Steve Troxler for Agriculture were also re-elected. The state also elected Republican Catherine Truitt for Superintendent of Public Instruction at 51.4%.
Swain will have Republican representation in the state legislature with Corbin elected as Senator (50) with 66.65% of the vote and Clampitt to the House (119) with 54.1%. Similarly, Republican Wingate won the seat for Judge with 65.19% of votes in the district.
You can view statewide results by visiting ncsbe.gov.