Presidential Primary numbers reflect changing county electorate

Mar. 7—Many voters were no doubt unsurprised when former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden won the respective Republican and Democrat Presidential Preferential Primary in Pittsburg County and statewide in Oklahoma.

Still the numbers in Pittsburg County continue to reflect the county's changing electorate.

Trump won the Super Tuesday Republican Presidential Primary in Pittsburg County with 3,785 ballots, or 91.92% of the total GOP ballots cast.

Biden won the Democrat Primary in Pittsburg County with 627 votes, for only 57.58% of the total ballots cast on the Democrat side.

Trump's closest competitor, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley — who suspended her campaign Wednesday — garnered 259 votes, or 6.84% of the GOP ballots in Pittsburg County.

The rest of the GOP votes came in the form of minuscule amounts for other candidates, none of whom garnered even 1% of the vote.

Among them, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had 21 votes; Vivek Ramaswamy and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, had nine votes each, and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson had four. All of them suspended their presidential campaigns weeks earlier — but too late to get off the ballot in Pittsburg County and the rest of Oklahoma.

Two other GOP candidates, Ryan L. Binkley and David Stuckenberg had two votes each.

Although there were no major Democrat challengers to Biden on the Presidential Primary ballot in Oklahoma, the remainder of Pittsburg County Presidential Primary votes were divided among them.

Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips had 160 votes, or 14.69% of the total Democrat ballots cast in the county.

He was followed by author Marianne Williamson, who had 121 votes, for 11.11%.

Stephen Lyons had 111 votes, for 10.19% on the Democrat side, followed by Amando Mando Perez-Serrato, with 36 votes, for 3.31%. Cenk Uygur had 34 votes, or 3.12%.

For the first time, the Libertarian Party had two candidates on the Presidential Preferential Primary ballot in Oklahoma — getting a total of nine votes between them.

Jcob Hornberger had six votes, while Chase Oliver had three.

Statewide, Trump had 254,688 votes, or 81.83% of the GOP ballots cast in Oklahoma.

Haley garnered 49,373 ballots for 15.86%, with the remainder of the Republican votes going to the other candidates.

On the Democrat statewide total, Biden had 66,824 votes, or 72.98 of the total Democrat ballots cast.

Williamson followed with 8,349 votes on the statewide Democrat ballot, for 9.12%, followed by Phillips, with 8,177 votes, or 8.93%, with the remainder of votes scattered among the other Democrat candidates.

On the Libertarian side, Oliver had 569 votes, for 61.29%, while Hornberger had 360, for 38.75% of Libertarian ballots cast.

Oklahoma has a closed Primary Election system, meaning only voters registered to a particular political party can vote on that party's primary.

An exception again this year was the Democrat party, which is allowing registered independent voters to cast ballots in Democrat primary elections during the 2024 election cycle.