Santa Barbara County vote totals: 100 percent counted. Democrats: Barack Obama 49.75 percent, Hillary Clinton 42.36 percent. Republicans: John McCain 40.43 percent, Mitt Romney 32.19 percent.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton may have won the California presidential primary, but in Santa Barbara County it was Barack Obama who prevailed, according to Tuesday’s unofficial results.
With 100 percent of county precincts reporting, Democratic voters here supported Obama over Clinton by a wide margin, with nearly 50 percent of them choosing the Illinois senator, and about 42 percent picking the New York senator and former first lady. Another 5 percent voted for former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, even though he had dropped out of the race.
In the Republican contest, the results in Santa Barbara County mirrored those across the state: Sen. John McCain of Arizona twon the most votes — 40 percent — followed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 32 percent and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee with 12 percent.
According to the county Elections Office, there were 98,620 ballots cast out of 183,099 registered voters in the county, a 53.86 turnout.
Nationally, Super Tuesday failed to decide either contest. For the Democrats, Clinton and Obama remain neck and neck, with Obama capturing more states (at least 12 of 22), but Clinton winning the biggest prizes, California and New York.
The race for the Republican nomination is less of a dead heat — McCain has emerged as a clear leader. Still, Huckabee and Romney performed well enough to potentially stay in the game as the primary contests continue.
In Santa Barbara County, Obama received 26,375 votes — more than any other candidate, Democrat or Republican, according to the unofficial results. Clinton took the second most (22,456), followed by McCain (14,539) and Romney (11,577). Nearly 4,300 people in Santa Barbara County voted for Huckabee, and about 2,680 chose Edwards.