Image Credit: Defense Visual Information Distribution Service via Picryl.com / Public Domain
By Adam Friedman [Tennessee Lookout -CC BY-NC-ND 4.0] –
Former President Donald Trump has competed in the last three Tennessee Republican presidential primaries, securing victories and improving his vote totals each time.
With estimates that 95% of ballots have been counted, the former president garnered 447,235 votes in Tuesday’s election. His 2024 total is nearly 63,000 votes higher than in 2020, when he ran unopposed, and around 114,000 more than he received in the competitive 2016 primary.
If it hasn’t been straightforward for the last eight years, Super Tuesday cemented once again Tennessee is Trump country.
*Unofficial results as of March 6, 2024
Trump’s improving results come despite lower turnout in the Republican primary compared to the high point in 2016 when over 855,000 people cast ballots in a still competitive race.
This year’s turnout of around 580,000 is on par with historical totals for competitive Republican primaries held in 2008, won by Mike Huckabee, and 2012, won by Rick Santorum.
On the Democratic side, President Joe Biden ran unopposed in his Tennessee race. U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minnesota, was on the ballot in several other Super Tuesday states but not Tennessee. Biden’s only competition was an option to vote ‘uncommitted.’
The ‘uncommitted’ choice drew national attention during the Michigan primary, when 13.2% chose not to vote for the sitting president. About 20% of Democratic voters in Minnesota voted uncommitted during Tuesday’s primary.
But, around 7.9% of Democrats in Tennessee chose this option, with Nashville (9.4%) and Knoxville (11.5%) driving a high percentage of uncommitted voters. Roughly 5.1% of Memphis voters, another Democratic stronghold in the state, voted uncommitted.
