In Orange County, Clinton defeated Trump by 50 percentage points

About 70 percent of registered voters turned out in Orange County for the Nov. 8 election, up almost 2 percentage points from 2012.

In Orange County, Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton defeated Republican Donald Trump by a margin of 50 percentage points, collecting 59,105 votes to Trump’s 18,373 votes.

Trump won North Carolina with 49.9 percent of the vote compared to Clinton’s 46.13 percent.

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson collected 2.89 percent of the total vote in Orange County with 2,352 votes, while there were 1,428 write-in votes.

According to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, Green Party candidate Jill Stein received 0 write-in votes in Orange County.

Orange County saw a total voter turnout of 81,729, which is 70.16 percent of the 116,482 registered voters in Orange County.

The county also saw a record number of early voters with 59,766, up from 50,233 in 2012.

Tracy Reams, the director of the Orange County Board of Elections, said she was hoping for 60,000 early voters, but she was pleased with the final turnout.

“I guess people wanted to go and vote and get it out of the way,” she said.

Reams said the convenience of the county’s five early voting locations was a potential reason why voters showed up to vote early.

“We had five polling places to vote early and kept them open from 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.,” Reams said. “We’d like to think the times made it convenient for folks.”

Reams said early voting was up despite the county having the same number of early voting locations as it did the last two elections.

As far as specific demographics of Orange County voters who came out to the polls, Orange County Democratic Party chairperson Matt Hughes said those numbers won’t be out for a while.

“We don’t have demographic data in terms of who voted just yet,” Hughes said. “That information probably won’t be available for awhile. However, election returns strongly correlate with 2008 and 2012 here in Orange County.”

The Orange County Republican Party was not available for comment.

Reams said she didn’t really notice a difference when it came to certain demographics coming out in larger numbers than usual.

In the state of North Carolina, 68.21 percent of all registered voters in the state voted during this election cycle, a total of 4,715,882 voters out of 6,914,248.

North Carolina’s estimated population as of 2015 was 10,042,802, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In the Senate race, Democrat Deborah Ross received 70.71 percent of the vote in Orange County but ultimately lost to Republican incumbent Richard Burr 51.11 percent to 45.33 percent.

In the gubernatorial race, which is currently being challenged, Democrat Roy Cooper won Orange County with 74.79 percent of the vote and leads Republican incumbent Pat McCrory in the state by only 0.11 percentage points, or 4,980 votes.

In the lieutenant governor race, Democrat Linda Coleman won in Orange County with 70.16 percent of the vote but was defeated in the state by Republican incumbent Dan Forest, 51.87 percent to 45.28 percent.

@ryansalch  

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