Laurens County is a trendsetter and provides a metaphorical litmus test in regard to whether how well Democrats are doing and how strong Republicans have performed.
Politically, it is a challenging county. However, Laurens is an example of why Democrats haven’t done well on the state and federal level.
The main reason is that there is a disconnect. Some may blame the candidates or maybe state Democratic officials, but whatever it is, it affects turnout and perception of the party, and this has been one reason why conservatives have been able to keep this county red despite a stronger progressive base than some may want to admit.
Laurens County has been the home of long-term state representative Dubose Porter, but after running for governor, he gave up his seat.
The Democratic candidate for Porter’s old state House District 143 seat is Pablo Santamaria, and it will be interesting how well he does in the mid-term election, but he will have to do extraordinarily well in Dublin, East Dublin and Montrose with above average turnout.
There are 18 voting locations with approximately 27,000 registered voters in Laurens County.
Calhoun Park has approximately 5,300 registered voters.
The next two largest voting precincts are located in Dublin and are decisively conservative, the Pine Forest voting precinct and the Bethsaida voting precinct. Both precincts voted overwhelmingly for McCain in 2008 and Barack Obama received 26 and 23 percent of the vote respectively.
There are smaller precincts that have a strong progressive base such as East Dublin’s Buckeye and Smith voting precincts.
Smith is fourth largest voting precinct in Laurens County with approximately 2,800 registered voters. In 2008, Obama received 43% of the vote on Election Day in 2008.
The city of Montrose’s Burgamy and Harvard voting precincts have approximately 900 and 800 voters in each of the voting precincts respectively.
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