Hillary Clinton and John McCain cruised to easy victories in Livingston County and across New York State in party primaries Tuesday. Clinton beat Barack Obama 62 to 35 per cent in the county, with John Edwards polling 2 per cent. That was better than her statewide margin of 57 to 40 per cent. Clinton appeared to have won every county in the state except Tompkins County, which includes the student-heavy City of Ithaca.
John McCain did win every county in the state including Livingston by a margin of 43 to 32 per cent over Mitt Romney with Mike Huckabee taking 15 per cent. Statewide McCain won 51 per cent to 28 for Romney and 10 for Huckabee. Ron Paul finished fourth statewide with about 6 per cent of the vote.
Eight Republican candidates were on the primary ballot and all received at least some votes in Livingston County. By percentage, Ron Paul had 5 %, Rudy Guiliani 2% and Fred Thompson got 1%.
In the delegate race, John McCain took all 87 Republican delegates under the state party’s winner-take-all rule. In the Democratic race, however, the delegate result was not immediately clear because of a complicated formula for proportional allotment of delegates.
Unofficial individual town results within Livingston County showed Clinton dominating in much of the county, but Obama taking Geneseo by a slim margin, 429-420. Obama won the Village of Geneseo by better than 2-1, taking 305 votes to Clinton’s 147.
Romney had pockets of strength in the county winning 4 of 7 districts in Livonia, although he narrowly lost the town to McCain 233-224. He also won two districts in Avon and one in Geneseo. Mike Huckabee won District 2 in Lima.
Overall, the Democratic race inspired a bigger turnout. Countywide, 37 per cent of the 10,249 registered Democrats turned out, versus 26 per cent of the 17,069 enrolled Republicans. Geneseo led the Democrat turn-out with 48.1%, with Avon bringing out 43.9%.
On the Republican side the most spirited race was in Lima where 34% of the party faithful turned out. The Town of Portage turned out 33%, with Avon following with 31.5%. Only 29.8% of Geneseo Republicans turned out.
The Clarion News Blog 