With record numbers of North Carolina and Twin Counties voters casting ballots in Tuesday's Democratic primary election, presidential hopeful Barack Obama scored a double-digit victory in the Tar Heel state.
Polling locations throughout Nash and Edgecombe counties were abuzz – some poll workers reporting lines throughout the day – as each county recorded greater than 40 percent turnouts.
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Barack Obama captured the North Carolina Democratic presidential primary over Hillary Clinton.
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That's considerable when compared with voter turnout during the 2004 presidential primary, which generated 19 percent turnout in Edgecombe County and just 12 percent in Nash County.
Huge numbers of voters were energized by the tight race between Obama and Hillary Clinton, which could drag out until the Democratic convention in June, some experts have said.
Ferrel Guillory, a political science professor from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, said Obama's double-digit victory will effectively "stop the slide" he experienced in recent weeks, as scores of white, middle-class voters seemed to shift support toward Clinton.
Regardless of Tuesday's results, the race likely will go on, Guillory added.
"As she has campaigned in North Carolina, Clinton has urged voters to vote for her on the argument that the state could be a 'game changer' if she wins," Guillory said. "But she has not won. Obama has."
Obama, who slipped in the polls leading up to the primary, won more than 60 percent of the vote in the Twin Counties, according to complete but unofficial results.
Dozens of local Obama volunteers stood outside local precincts, waving signs and asking residents to consider voting for the U.S. senator from Illinois.
"People know (this election) is important because they are ready for change," Joyce Jones said after casting her ballot. "If Obama is president, I know things will start to turn around."
Intense interest in the Democratic race for president – particularly among black voters – may have had reverberating impacts on other major races throughout the state.
Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue, in her attempt to claim the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, won more than 55 percent of the votes throughout the state and nearly 60 percent of the votes in the Twin Counties.
Perdue's long-standing support among black voters may have helped push her past N.C. State Treasurer Richard Moore. Rocky Mount resident Dennis Jones said after casting his ballot Tuesday that Moore's last-minute attempt to cut into Perdue's support in the black community may have hurt his cause.
"I didn't buy into those ads," Jones, a black man, said of Moore's commercial that attempted to paint Perdue as a Ku Klux Klan sympathizer. "That was just an attempt to manipulate the facts and scare people."
As was the trend across the state, by far the majority of ballots cast in the Twin Counties – more than 65 percent – were in the Democratic primary.
Jennifer Alston, an unaffiliated voter who said she typically leans Republican, said she voted for Clinton on Tuesday because she wants John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, to win in November.
The support shown for Obama throughout the Twin Counties was matched only by the opposition displayed for a proposed quarter-cent sales tax hike increase.
"We are paying enough in taxes already," Rocky Mount resident Angela Twine said of the tax, which was turned down in both counties by more than 61 percent of voters. "There's no way I support that."
