Merced County support of Trump on par with nearby counties

Donald Trump won a landslide victory during Tuesday’s California Republican primary, but still earned a lower percentage of votes than Mitt Romney did in 2012.

Only registered Republicans could vote in the Republican presidential primary. Trump earned 75 percent of the votes counted as of Friday. Romney earned 80 percent of California’s GOP vote in 2012, with former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul siphoning off much of the rest.

Across Merced County on Tuesday, Trump received just under 78 percent of the vote, or 6,712 ballots, according to partial results reported Friday. Merced County Registrar of Voters Barbara Levey said her office had yet to add more than 4,900 late-arriving mail-in ballots to the results. Another 2,900 provisional ballots cast at polling stations Tuesday likely will be tallied next week, she said.

Compared with the GOP primary in June 2012, Trump performed slightly better in terms of percentages than Romney did in Merced County. The county results from that year show Romney won 76.6 percent of votes, or 8,160. Ron Paul had about 8.9 percent of Merced County’s vote, and Rick Santorum had just over 7 percent.

Although all of Trump’s major opponents had suspended their campaigns well before California’s primary, his opponents for the GOP nomination continued to receive support from hundreds of Merced County voters. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was the strongest of the challengers, winning nearly 10 percent of the vote, with 849 ballots as of Friday afternoon. Ohio Gov. John Kasich won 6.6 percent, or 571 votes; and Ben Carson won 3.5 percent, or 298 votes.

In terms of raw numbers, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton won more Merced County votes than Trump, 7,169, according to the partial results. She finished well ahead of her Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders, in the county, 56.5 to 41 percent. Sanders had 5,190 votes from Merced County supporters as of Friday.

Across California, Merced County’s support of Trump was nearly on par with results from nearby Stanislaus, Mariposa, Madera and Fresno counties. Trump’s strongest support came from Republican voters in rural, northern parts of the state, including Colusa, Lassen, Modoc and Tehama counties. (Many of the same places supported Sanders over Clinton in the Democratic primary.)

Trump did not do as well among Republicans in several urban parts of the state, particularly around San Francisco and Los Angeles.

This story was originally published June 10, 2016 at 4:54 PM with the headline "Merced County support of Trump on par with nearby counties."