Jones County voters came out en masse to let their preference be known in the Dec. 6 runoff election, with record-breaking numbers almost daily during the five days of early voting.
Senate candidate Herschel Walker won in Jones County with a 62 percent margin. Incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock received 40 percent of the vote during early voting but only 25 percent on Election Day.
His overall percentage of the vote in Jones County was 33 percent.
Statewide, however, Warnock was the victor with 51.37 percent of the total vote, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s website.
The percentage of Jones County voters who cast their vote in the runoff election was 53.94 percent.
In hard numbers, Jones County has 20,869 registered voters, and 11,257 cast their ballots in the runoff election.
Early voting accounted for 38 percent of the total vote in Jones County. That breaks down to 4,306 people casting their ballots at the Elections Office in the Government Center, putting the average number of early voters per day over 860.
The number of people who requested absentee ballots by mail was 742. The remainder of voters went to one of Jones County’s 10 precincts on Election Day.
Looking at individual precincts in Jones County, Hawkins has the most registered voters with 3,125. Voters in the Hawkins precinct cast their ballots at Jones County’s Fire Station 8, located on Rock Creek Road. Hawkins was also the only precinct where Warnock received the largest number of votes. In that precinct, the incumbent received 1,041 votes to Walker’s 617. In the other nine precincts, Walker prevailed easily over Warnock.
The Finney precinct had the largest percentage of voters to cast their ballots in the runoff with close to 62 percent. Voters in the Finney precinct cast their ballots at Jones County Fire Station 6 on Upper River Road. The smallest percentage of the vote was at the Saunders precinct, which is also the county’s smallest precinct. Voters in the Saunders precinct cast their ballots at the East Juliette Fire Department Station 3, located on Round Oak Juliette Road. Fifteen percent of Saunders’ registered voters came out to vote in the runoff.
