Early voting in Tennessee ended with a resounding advantage for the Republican Party going into Election Day on March 1 as balloters voted 2-to-1 in the GOP primary.
“These results are indicative of where the two parties are right now in our state,” said Tennessee Republican Party executive director Brent Leatherwood after the conclusion of early voting Tuesday. “Given these early voting results, we are looking at nothing short of a massive Republican turnout for Election Day in Tennessee.”
His comments come after early voters overwhelmingly voted Republican by a count of 257,209 to 128,374 statewide.
Normally Democratic Warren County came close to following this trend as local residents voted Republican 1,725 to 963 for Democrats. A total of 2,688 people voted early in Warren County.
Election Day for those who did not vote early is this Tuesday, March 1. Polls will be open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.
The number of people voting Republican was greater than the number voting Democrat on all but one day in Warren County. The final day saw the biggest margin as the 673 who voted Tuesday included 488 who voted in the GOP primary.
While Tennessee almost always goes Republican in national presidential elections, Warren County, with the exception of Barack Obama, has almost always fallen in the Democratic camp during presidential elections.
Bill Clinton, husband to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, won in Warren County by large margins. Therefore, the reason for the sudden change has prompted many theories here among political observers.
Some suggest polarizing Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has prompted many Democratic voters to cross over in an attempt to help one of his opponents, those now pretty well limited to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Others suggest even Democrats have turned sour on Clinton and self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders and jumped on the GOP bandwagon.
Tennessee will join six other states March 1 as part of Super Tuesday on a day that could go a long way to determining who will get the nominations for president.