Of the 30,000 registered voters 14,174 (47.23%) showed enough interest to make their opinion known, they voted. Mining the Unofficial Results I discovered some other interesting results.
In Vance County’s two competitive races, Register of Deeds and Sheriff Office, both had high voter totals. For the Register of Deeds 13,238 votes were cast or 93% of all ballots cast. The race for Sheriff’s Office attracted the largest number of total voters, 14,018 or 98.9% of all ballots cast. More ballots were cast for Sherriff’s Office than were cast for US Senate or the US House Representative races respectively.
At the other end of the ballot, the uncontested races, the data is not as positive. More people voted for Clerk of Court (11,383) than voted for the three county commissioners and four school board members combined (10,813). The three uncontested races for commissioners drew the attention of only 4,360 voters or 37% of all voters within their own districts. An uncontested Court of Appeals Judge had more total votes than all three commissioners combined. The four uncontested school board seats fared worst with only 6,453 votes or a meager 30% of all voters in their respective districts.
Voting is the opportunity for incumbents to learn just what voters really think of their work. The votes cast in uncontested races are mostly by family, friends and very loyal followers. Can it then be assumed that an uncontested candidate winning with only 30% of total votes has few loyal followers compared to an uncontested candidate who wins with 75% – 80% of the total votes.
Detailed statistics are compiled in this spreadsheet: Unoffical election results 110414.xlsx