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 Mrs. Fred Thompson with their children at Embassy Suites rally.
Intense campaigning by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee among Southern Baptists, including sermons from the pulpit, gave him a slight lead in Upstate counties. Statewide, however, Huckabee fell short of McCain with only 30 percent of the vote.
Huckabee won Greenville County with 16,775 votes to McCain’s 15,297. Northern Greenville County rural precincts went heavily for Huckabee, while down-town Greenville and high-income eastside precincts tended to go for McCain. Thompson also did well in the rural areas of Northern Greenville County, sometimes doing better than McCain.
For example, Greenville Precinct 17 delivered 239 votes for McCain and only 42 for Huckabee. Thornblade provided 186 for McCain and 116 for Huckabee.
The Oneal and Skyland Precincts were somewhat typical of the rural areas of Greenville County where Huckabee supporters strongly edged out McCain. Skyland reported 226 votes for Huckabee and only 70 for McCain. It is significant that in the Skyland Precinct, Fred Thompson edged out McCain with 136 votes.
The Huckabee vote at Oneal was 347 to McCain’s 155. Thompson came in second with 210 votes.
In Greenville County, Fred Thompson who was endorsed by District 17 House member Harry Cato and Eric Bedingfield from District 28 in Greenville County received more Greenville County votes than Mitt Romney with 12,438 to 10,188.
Romney, who campaigned early and hard in Greenville County, pulled out of South Carolina early, leaving Thompson, who campaigned to the end with his wife and small children, to pull from his support.
John McCain with his wife and 95 year old mother campaigned hard until Election Day as did Mike Huckabee and his family.
It was obvious that a significant number of voters who normally consider themselves Democrats voted in the Republican primary. It will be interesting to observe if the numbers were large enough to impact the Democrat primary next Saturday.
With the Florida primary coming up next week, at press time, a January 20 Rasmussen poll showed Romney leading McCain by 5 points and Giuliani trailing McCain and Huckabee far behind with Thompson.
In Florida, the poll indicated that Huckabee’s support among Evangelical Christian voters is fading, with the former Baptist preacher being favored by only 25 percent of the Evangelical voters, with Romney getting 20 percent and Thompson 17 percent. Moderate voters are divided between McCain and Giuliani with McCain holding an 11 point lead.
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