Voter turnout down in DeSoto County, statewide
Nearly 70 percent of DeSoto County’s registered voters turned out Tuesday, but the number was still down from the last presidential election four years ago, election officials said Wednesday.
A total of 64,243 ballots were cast in the general election and a special election that ran concurrently to fill a vacant state Senate seat and a state House seat. The total represented 68.1 percent of the county’s 94,335 registered voters, said Deputy Circuit Clerk Marla Treadway.
The figure was a drop of about 10 percent from the total in the 2008 presidential race between President Obama and John McCain.
Absentee balloting also was down in the county from four years ago. This election, about 5,600 absentee ballots were cast, compared to roughly 6,500 in 2008.
The low numbers were indicative of a statewide trend. About 100,000 fewer Mississippians cast ballots than in the 2008 presidential election, with the Republican vote dropping off more than the Democratic vote. President Obama, who won re-election, captured nearly 44 percent of the Mississippi presidential vote this year; that was the second-best performance, behind only Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election run, of any Democrat after 1980.
Desoto Appeal
11/8/12
Magnolia Tribune
