Jones County voters made their choices known in last week’s primary runoff with a turnout total close to 20 percent of registered voters.
The primary runoff was needed in several contests because no candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote in the May 19 Primary Election. That included the Republican race for governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, state school superintendent and U.S. Senate.
Democrats also had runoffs for lieutenant governor and secretary of state.
Jones County Republicans agreed with the vote statewide in their selection of Mike Collins over Derek Dooley to be their U.S. Senate sandidate, 1,891 votes to 912. Collins won the state by a margin of 55 percent.
Jones County Republicans, however, chose Burt Jones over Rick Jackson for governor. The count was 1,652 for Jones and 1,190 for Jackson. Statewide Jackson won with 52 percent of the vote over Jones.
Jones County Republicans agreed with the statewide vote for secretary of state, selecting Tim Fleming over Vernon Jones and incumbent state school superintendent Richard Woods over Bubba Longgrear.
Democrats in Jones County agreed with the statewide vote in the choice of Josh McLaurin over Nabilah Parks for lieutenant governor and Penny Reynolds over Dana Barrett for secretary of state.
The turnout for Republican voters outnumbered Democratic voters in the runoff, 2858 voters to 781 voters. The number of voters who opted to cast their ballots on the June 16 Election Day was 2,242 with 1,263 voters who took advantage of early voting.
The number of absentee votes received by mail in the runoff was 134.
The winning candidates from each party will face off against each other in the Nov. 3 General Election.
