Rick Dandes
SUNBURY— Although Barack Obama handily won Pennsylvania in last night’s election, with 3.1 million statewide votes to John McCain’s 2.5 million votes, Susquehanna Valley voters cast a majority of their ballots for John McCain.
But McCain’s vote total in Union, Snyder, Northumberland and Montour Counties often fell far short of the number of votes garnered by President George W. Bush in 2004.
In Northumberland County, McCain pulled in 18,012 votes; four years ago, Bush won with 22,044 votes.
In Montour County McCain received almost 500 fewer votes than Bush did in 2004.
The pattern held true in Snyder County, as McCain collected 9,895 votes compared to Bush’s 10,623.
With 82 percent of the vote in at 1 a.m., McCain had 7,644 votes, or 56 percent of the total votes cast. Four years ago, Bush pulled in 10,420 votes.
Obama, on the other hand, although losing to McCain in all four counties, performed about as well as John Kerry did in 2004, and in some cases, as in Montour County, actually did better. Obama had 3,347 votes in Montour; four years earlier, Kerry barely hit 3,000.
