Well, You Can't Blame Ocracoke

It wasn't even close: 142 votes for Hillary; 91 for the Donald, and 16 for the stoner. Four voters chose to write-in their choice for POTUS. Jill Stein (who wasn't on the ballot, but could be written in) got zero votes. In early voting on Ocracoke, Clinton got 176 votes to Trump's 67, for an island total of 318 for Hillary and 158 for Trump. With 796 registered voters, Hillary got a clear mandate from Ocracoke with 66% of our vote. (For comparison, in 2012 Obama got 64.8% of Ocracoke's vote, with 310 votes to Romney's 154.)

Overall, Trump took Hyde County with 1275 votes to Clinton's 956 and Johnson's 42. There were also 9 write-in votes for POTUS.

In the Senate race, Richard Burr beat Deborah Ross in NC. But not on Ocracoke. She had 320 votes to his 159. 

The ballots are still being counted in the too-close-to-call gubernatorial race, but Ocracoke overwhelmingly flushed McCrory. No surprise there: Cooper 373, McCrory 123.

Basically, Ocracoke showed once more how divided we are from our mainland counterparts. Hyde County was red, but Ocracoke is blue.

Except for Walter B. Jones. He won Ocracoke, the county, and the district. He and Earl Pugh were the only Republicans to garner more votes than their Democratic rivals in the Ocracoke precinct.

Earl Pugh, Jr. beat Thomas Midgette for the Lake Landing Township seat on the Hyde County Board of Commissioners. On Ocracoke, Earl got 221 votes to Thomas's 189. Overall, Earl won in the county 1208 to 831. 

In other races, Ocracoke picked Brownie Futrell over Bill Cook, Warren Judge (Tess Judge) over Beverly Boswell, and other Dems up and down the ballot.

Charles Meeker is well-known on the island, and he beat Cherie Berry 292–117. Cherie took the county with 52% of the vote.

Locally, Tom Pahl ran unopposed for Ocracoke's seat on the board of commissioners – he won! Scott Bradley and Regina O'Neal were both reelected to the Ocracoke Sanitary District board. 

Ocracoke School held a mock election yesterday for grade 3–12. Here are the results:

Clinton: 81; Trump: 27; Johnson: 7

Ross: 56; Burr: 45; Haugh: 10

Jones: 53; Reeves: 49;

Cooper: 84; McCrory: 26; Cecil: 6

Coleman: 57, Forest: 35

The takeaway? You can't blame the young'uns, either. There's hope for our future.

UPDATE: I did the math. Ocracoke has 796 registered voters and only 401 actually dragged themselves to the polls. That's a 50.3% voter turnout. Oh, the shame. I guess you can blame us a little.

UPDATE: I updated the election tallies, adding in the early voting numbers.