How did Beaufort County vote in the SC primaries? Here’s the breakdown

Tuesday’s South Carolina statewide primary election resulted in upsets in Beaufort County council races, and a new Republican nominee for sheriff for the first time in nearly three decades.

But how did Beaufort County residents vote for the major statewide and federal races, like governor, Congress and U.S. Senate?

Here’s a breakdown of how Beaufort County voted, based on unofficial results from the South Carolina Election Commission.

Governor

The Republican primary for governor will go to a runoff after Tuesday’s election, where no candidate secured a simple majority of ballots to win. Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette secured 28% of the vote and Attorney General Alan Wilson got 26%; the two will face off for the nomination in a runoff June 23.

Wilson carried 24% of the vote in Beaufort County, winning all three precincts in Beaufort, and many of the neighboring precincts in Lady’s Island, Port Royal and Seabrook. Evette, who got 28% of the Beaufort County vote, carried precincts across much of Hilton Head, Bluffton and Sun City, showing a split across the Broad River between the two candidates.

Current Congresswoman Nancy Mace finished fifth in the Republican primary for governor statewide, but outperformed those statewide results in Beaufort County, where she finished third. Mace received 23% of the vote in Beaufort County, compared to the 12% she gathered across the state. She endorsed Wilson for the race after dropping out.

Jermaine Johnson, who successfully secured the Democratic nomination for governor Tuesday, performed similarly in the county and statewide results, gathering 60% and 59%, respectively.

Senate

Longtime incumbent Senator Lindsey Graham cruised to a win Tuesday, easily winning the Republican nomination with 57% of the vote statewide. Beaufort County voted for Graham at 63%.

Democratic nominee Annie Andrews was also particularly popular among Beaufort County residents, gathering 76% of the votes compared to 62% statewide.

U.S. House of Representatives District 1

In the Republican primary to fill Mace’s seat in Congress, Beaufort County voters aligned with the top two finishers, Charleston City Councilwoman Jenny Costa Honeycutt and state Rep. Mark Smith. Smith won the county with 18% of the vote compared to Costa Honeycutt’s 17.7%.

Both candidates are heading to the June 23 runoff election, where one will earn the Republican nomination for the seat.

Costa Honeycutt won a sizable concentration of precincts on the north side of Hilton Head, and was evenly distributed throughout the rest of the county, north and south of the Broad River. Smith won a majority of the precincts in Sun City, much of the rest of Hilton Head and parts of St. Helena Island.

The biggest break from district-wide trends was Beaufort County Council Member Logan Cunningham finishing third in the county with about 16% of the vote, compared to his sixth place finish statewide. Cunningham won a large majority of the precincts in Bluffton.

Former District 1 representative and Governor Mark Sanford finished fourth in Beaufort County, despite having dropped out before the primary. Sanford carried districts in Port Royal, Burton and Seabrook.

On the Democratic side, Beaufort County also voted former Coast Guard Officer Mac Deford and former Navy Officer Nancy Lacore as the top two candidates to advance to the June 23 runoff.

While Lacore gathered more votes across the whole of District 1, with about 36% of the electorate, Deford won Beaufort County. He received 37% of the vote in Beaufort County, the only county with sections in District 1 where he received more votes than Lacore. In comparison, he gained 29% of the votes in the district-wide race.

Beaufort County Sheriff

Doug Seifert won the Republican primary for Beaufort County sheriff and will face Democrat Alphonso Small Jr. in the race to replace longtime incumbent P.J. Tanner in November.

Seifert received 58% of the vote while his opponent, JoJo Woodward, received 42%. Seifert won every district in Hilton Head and carried support mostly south of the Broad. He also won the coastal districts of St. Helena and the areas and districts around Lady’s Island. Woodward won areas largely in Burton, Seabrook and the western portions of Bluffton.