Republicans came out in big numbers Saturday to participate in the Republican Presidental Caucus at Clinton County High School. Although caucus workers kept the process moving quickly, there were still long lines of voters on hand shortly after the doors opened at 10:00 a.m. Clinton County Republican officials said that 1,391 Republicans voted in Saturday’s caucus, with Donald Trump receiving the most votes here, followed by Ted Cruz.

The new Kentucky Republican presidential caucus is now history and according to most accounts, went rather smoothly across the state and even exceeded some expectations in the numbers of Republican voters who turned out on a Saturday to cast a ballot for a presidential nominee.

Although the number of voters was somewhat unexpected, the final results were not, at least as far as projected winners and finishers in the race for the state’s 46 total delegates to the Republican National Convention to be held later this summer.

As projected, GOP front-runner Donald Trump carried the state, but the margin of victory was much closer than many had predicted.

Trump garnered an unofficial 57,234 votes across the Commonwealth, or just over 35 percent while his closest challenger, both in Kentucky and nationwide, Texas Senator Ted Cruz received 50,944 votes for a little over 31 percent of the total. A distant third was Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who tallied 27,842 votes in the state for 17 percent. He was followed closely by the only other active Republican candidate, Ohio Governor John Kasich who received 24,360 votes, or slightly under 15 percent.

A total of 11 initial candidates qualified to be on the Kentucky caucus ballot, with seven of those already having ceased their campaigns. Collectively, they still received a little over 11 percent of the vote total.

In Clinton County, the race for the top spot wasn’t as close as the state, with Trump winning handily with 742 votes, compared to Cruz’ 345. Rubio received only 167 votes locally while Kasich had 105 votes. Other candidates receiving votes in Clinton County, although no longer in the running, were six votes each for Rand Paul and Dr. Ben Carson, five for Mike Huckabee, two for Jeb Bush and one vote for Rick Santorum. Neither Carly Florina or Chris Christie received a local vote.

The caucus held at the Clinton County High School cafeteria on March 5 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. also saw a larger turnout locally than many anticipated, as some 1,391 Republicans voted. This represents 23.2 percent of the county’s 5,992 registered Republican voters.

According to Clinton County Republican Chairman Doug Thrasher, despite the new concept and process in the way the party voted for a presidential nominee, he said things went relatively smooth throughout the day, with only a few minor incidents.

One voter, for example, although Republican, showed a Wayne County driver’s license as ID, which could not be accepted and a couple of other voter’s names had been marked as applying for an absentee ballot, although they had apparently not received one in time to vote. “All but five or six people who came to the caucus to vote were able to do so,” Thrasher noted.

Thrasher also noted that almost half of all who voted Saturday did so between 10 a.m. and noon, saying that about 600 people voted during that two-hour time period. To make the process go more quickly and smoother, tabulators counted votes in batches, keeping running totals every couple of hours. Each count was forwarded to the Kentucky Republican Party, including the final results after the 4 p.m. voting deadline.

Thrasher praised the 16 volunteers who worked at the caucus throughout the day to make it run smoothly, saying they all worked hard, including the three tabulators on hand, thanking them for their work.

Although the final votes came at 4 p.m. in each prevailing time zone, it was approximately 10 p.m. Saturday night before all votes had been counted and made official.

The Kentucky Republican Party is also touting the new caucus system as a success.

In a press release issued early Sunday morning, the party quoted Washington Post national political correspondent Dave Weigel as saying, “If we must have caucuses, Kentucky’s version is miles ahead of Iowa.”

The party also reported the following numbers in that release:

* 229,667 Republicans voted in the Kentucky Republican Presidential Caucus.

* Total statewide turnout in the caucus was 18 percent, easily exceeding the 15.7 percent of voters who cast ballots in the 2012 presidential primary.

* 100 counties saw an increase in the number of voters who participated in the caucus compared to the 2012 presidential primary, with 42 counties increasing over 100 percent.

* Statewide, 30.4 percent more voters voted in the 2016 caucus than the 2012 presidential primary.

* More than 3,000 dedicated Republicans across the state served as volunteer Caucus Chairs and Caucus Officials.

* 53,507 more Republicans voted in the caucus than the 176,160 who voted in the 2012 presidential primary.

* 31,874 more Republicans voted in the caucus than the 197,793 who voted in the 2008 presidential primary.

Some caucus states are a “winner take all” race, with the top vote getter garnering all of a state’s delegate votes at the convention. However, Kentucky is not a winner take all caucus, with each candidate sharing delegates on a percentage basis of total votes received. This means that in Kentucky, Trump and Cruz will basically share about two-thirds of the total delegates.

Republican voters who did not take part in Saturday’s caucus vote are again reminded that the Republican candidates will not be on the upcoming May primary ballot, as the caucus was the only opportunity that registered GOP voters had in voting for a nominee this spring.

More details on the upcoming May primary election, including deadlines and races that will be appearing on the ballot, will be published in upcoming issues of the Clinton County News.