Photo by Mark Gormus/Media General News Service
Sen. Barack Obama, who won the Virginia primary last week, speaks in Richmond last May as Gov. Tim Kaine looks on.

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If Tuesday was a preview, then consider the voters of Goochland behind Democrat Barack Obama’s bid to be the next president of the United States.

During Tuesday’s primary, the first-term U.S. Senator from Illinois scored a big win in the Commonwealth, besting opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton by almost 30 points.

Locally, Obama’s win was even bigger. He carried Goochland County with ease, taking 68.56 percent of the votes cast (2,026) and bested Clinton by 38 points.
The former First Lady, by contrast, received 30.45 percent or 900 votes locally.

The other 29 votes in the primary were spread through four other candidates.

On the Republican side, Arizona’s Sen. John McCain continued his seemingly automatic gaunt to being his party’s nomination in November.

McCain received 1,221 votes in Goochland, giving him 56.29 percent of the votes cast. His only remaining competition among major-party candidates, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, received 719 votes, which was good enough for 33.14 percent of the vote but still a distant second.

Interestingly, all of the Republican candidates on the ballot received at least 10 votes in Goochland, regardless of whether or not their respective campaigns have been shut down.

Though Tuesday’s vote was merely a primary, it provides a snapshot of the political atmosphere as the two parties head towards the general election.

While Goochland usually leans to the right and votes normally with Republicans, more voters showed up to vote last week in the Democratic Party’s primary.

Virginia, an open-primary state that doesn’t require voters to declare for either party when voting, saw a large number of voters picking the Democratic race. And Goochland was no different.

Some 2,955 voters cast ballots in the Democratic race locally while 2,169 took part in the Republican primary. That’s a difference between 20.95 percent and 15.38 percent in total voters, respectively.

Across the state, Obama’s advantage mirrored his local advantage. According to the Virginia State Board of Elections, he received 627,135 of the 985,280 votes cast statewide and beat Clinton, who got 349,528 votes, by almost 30 points (63.65 to 35.47).

And to top it off, more people voted for him in the Democratic primary than voted at all in the Republican primary.

McCain, meanwhile, had a much rougher road to his Virginia victory. He garnered 243,981 votes, good enough for 50.04 percent of the 487,478 votes cast. Huckabee ran much closer, though, getting 40.77 percent of the votes.

Goochland County Registrar Frances Ragland said the county saw a much higher turnout than she was expecting.

“I was thinking it would be about 20 percent,” she said late last week. “But then in the few days before, there were a lot of people trying to register.”
The higher-than-usual turnout for the primary, Ragland added, was just one of the unusual things about last week’s vote.

Though voters don’t have to declare, Ragland said some participants last week voiced concern over having to pick a side.

“A lot of folks don’t like having to say they’re voting in this primary or that one,” she said.

Either way, she sees November already shaping up to be something pretty big.

“We had a lot of people recently who tried to sign up for the primary and the interest is already there for the fall,” Ragland added. 

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