‘Just not motivated’
Primary voter turnout lowest in 12 years
Fewer than 1 in 5 registered voters in Hamilton County submitted ballots in Tuesday’s primary election, the county’s lowest turnout in 12 years.
By the time polls closed Tuesday, 18.3% of voters had weighed in, casting 41,430 ballots, according to data from the county’s election commission.
Around threequarters of those ballots were cast in the Republican primary, and the rest for the Democrats, according to vote totals.
Tuesday’s turnout is down 37% from 2020, when Joe Biden and Donald Trump also won their parties’ primary elections. That year, 29% of Hamilton County voters turned out.
Though the county has added about 11,300 registered voters since the 2020 primary, around 21,000 fewer people voted in Hamilton County on Tuesday than did in 2020.
“It’s just terrible. People don’t vote,” Everlena Holmes, with the Hamilton County Voters Coalition, said by phone. “Especially when I know what I had to go through with voter suppression to get the opportunity to vote. I guess people just take it for granted.”
Holmes said voters in the county need to be educated about what’s at stake in elections.
“We’re just underrepresented, period,” she said. “People are hearing it’s not going to make a difference. They’re just not motivated to vote.” Many of Tuesday’s voters said they try to vote in every election. While some said they were there to vote for Trump, others said they were less motivated by the people on the ballot.
“I just appreciate exercising my right to vote,” Lewis Anthony said after voting at Meadowview Baptist Church
in Georgetown. “I wanted to bring my son to see the voting process. We’ve been living out here for eight years and have voted every time.”
In East Ridge, Eric Brackett said he also brought his 15-yearold to show her the democratic process.
Turnout in Hamilton County peaked in 2016, when Trump first appeared on the Republican ballot. Forty-two percent of voters cast ballots in that election, according to the commission.
Tuesday’s election had the third-lowest showing of any Hamilton County primary in this century, higher than the 16.5% who turned out in 2004 and 17.6% in 2012. Those years, like 2024, had an incumbent president running for a second term.
In the Democratic primary, about 8% of votes were uncommitted. Biden earned around 90%, and 127 people submitted a write-in option.
Some poll workers Tuesday said they expected an even lower turnout, given how few things were on the ballot and how sure the outcome of the presidential primaries seemed.
“We’ve been pretty steady all day,” poll officer Jennifer Thomas said in Georgetown. “It being Super Tuesday, I feel like there’s more people than were going to come.”