ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW)
Voting has ended in the runoff race for Republican nominees for lieutenant governor and state auditor.
In the lieutenant governor’s GOP runoff with 99.14 percent of the votes counted, unofficial results have Hal Weatherman leading Jim O’Neill 95,465 votes to 32,825. Weatherman, the projected winner, will face Democrat Rachel Hunt, who easily won her primary.
The unofficial results in the state auditor’s race have Dave Boliek leading Jack Clark 66,370 votes to 58,248. The winner will face Jessica Holmes (D) and Bob Drach (L).
In Buncombe County, unofficial results show some 2,239 people had cast ballots.
Weatherman (1,722 to 511) was the top vote-getter in the lieutenant governor’s race in Buncombe County.
But local voters differed with other state voters in the auditor’s race, giving the nod to Clark — 1,153 to 1,009.
VOTERS TRICKLE IN AS EARLY VOTING IN REPUBLICAN RUNOFF CONTINUES
Participation in the second primary is open to registered Republican voters, unaffiliated voters who voted the Republican Party’s ballot in the first primary and unaffiliated voters who did not vote in the first primary.
Early in-person voting ended May 11 with 262 voters having cast ballots, according to the Buncombe County Board of Elections. Data showed 136 of those were female, 119 were male and seven were undesignated. Two of those who cast ballots were African-American, one identified as multi-racial, four were listed as other, seven were undesignated and 248 were white.
The May 14 runoffs happened because the candidate with the most votes in the March 5 primaries did not receive more than 30 percent of the vote.