President Biden and former president Donald Trump each easily topped their parties’ presidential primary ballots in Plymouth – as they did statewide – on a not-so-super Super Tuesday.
In the Democratic primary, Biden received 5,780 votes, or 87 percent of the ballots cast. “No preference” came in second with 363 votes, about 5 percent of the total. There has been a nationwide push to get voters in Democratic presidential primaries to protest the President’s support of Israel in the war in Gaza by choosing “no preference.”
Trump received 5,526 votes, or 63 percent of Republican ballots, easily besting former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s 3,079, or 35 percent, according to unofficial results.
More people voted in the Republican primary than the Democratic one, by an 8893 to 6790 margin, counting as-yet unresolved write-in ballots.
Because more than a third of voters in the Republican primary chose Haley, Biden ended up with more votes than Trump in Plymouth. (On Wednesday, Haley ended her bid for the Republican nomination.)
The Republican primary attracted 17.4 percent of Plymouth’s registered voters, while 13.3 percent voted in the Democratic primary.
Nearly 37 percent of those who voted chose to do so by mail, said Town Clerk Kelly McElreath.
“It’s higher than I thought it would be,” she said.
Besides the presidential primary, voters also selected party state and town committee members.
State committee members are elected by state Senate districts, with each district electing a state committee man and woman. Plymouth is in the Plymouth and Barnstable District.
On the Democratic side, Brian Dunn ran unopposed as state committee man and Amy Kullar ran unopposed as state committee woman.
On the Republican side, James McMahon ran unopposed for state committee man, but there were two candidates for state committee woman: Jennifer Cunningham and Alice Zinkevic. Cunningham won with 5,115 votes to Zinkevic’s 2,017.
Fred Thys can be reached at fred@plymouthindependent.org