While there weren’t any upsets in Tuesday’s primary election, there were some interesting results.

I must mention that during the COVID-19 pandemic, we shouldn’t take these results as indicators of what will happen in the general election.

Turnout was extraordinarily low as expected because of the virus and there weren’t a lot of hotly contested races and issues on the primary ballot. The lack of presidential competition from both major political parties also kept a lot of voters away from going through the process of requesting an absentee ballot, getting one mailed to them and then voting.

Turnout in Mahoning County was 22.98 percent as of Tuesday. That percentage will increase once all mail-in ballots are counted — but not by much.

The lowest primary turnout in recent memory was 2012 with 29.62 percent in Mahoning, making this a new low.

Thomas McCabe, deputy director of the Mahoning County Board of Elections, had predicted 20 to 25 percent turnout, so he got it right. There was virtually nothing on the ballot — particularly for Democrats.

The biggest surprise of the primary wasn’t Christina M. Hagan’s win in the Republican primary for the 13th Congressional District nomination, but her complete and total dominance.

It didn’t come as a shock that she won as it has looked for a long time like it would be a race between her and Louis G. Lyras. Both are on opposite ends of the Republican political spectrum with Hagan a hardcore conservative and Lyras a liberal Republican.

They were the only two candidates among the seven seeking the Republican nomination to raise at least $100,000 with Lyras almost solely funding his own campaign. Hagan also benefited by at least $75,000 from a dark money group that touted her candidacy while attacking Lyras.

When the results came in, Hagan won all five counties — by a lot — and captured 66 percent of the vote.

Lyras was a distant second with 12 percent with Robert J. Santos in third with 11.4 percent. None of the other four candidates did better than 3.5 percent.

While Hagan was the only candidate among the seven ever to be elected to public office, she still captured two-thirds of the vote in a crowded field. That’s an impressive feat.

With the dark money group backing her, she should give U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Howland, his toughest challenge since he was first elected in 2002.

One thing to note is Ryan, who ran unopposed for his party’s nomination, received 59,609 votes. All seven Republican candidates combined got 28,155 votes.

Again, this occurred during a pandemic so I don’t know how that translates to the general election. But that’s still a lot of courtesy votes for Ryan.

In Mahoning County, 24,663 Democrats cast ballots in the primary compared to 11,887 Republicans.

Except for Republican congressional races, everything else on the ballot for both political parties was unopposed contests.

That doesn’t include the Democratic presidential primary though that one has major underlying conditions.

While the nominee has been former Vice President Joe Biden for a while, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont was still a candidate when the Ohio Department of Health postponed the state’s primary from March 17, so there was technically a race for early voters. Also, eight other former candidates had their names on the ballot.

Biden got 77 percent of the vote while Sanders received 12.4 percent. I’d presume a majority of Sanders’ support came from those early voters when he was still in the race.

Among those unopposed candidates on the county level in Mahoning, Sheriff Jerry Greene led Democrats with 20,539 votes while Commissioner David Ditzler, who had yard signs all over the place, had the least amount of vote, 17,374.

Among unopposed Republicans, Common Pleas Court Judge R. Scott Krichbaum led with 9,706 votes while Grant W. Williams, who will run against incumbent Commissioner Anthony Traficanti in November, had the least with 8,360.

Skolnick covers politics for The Vindicator.

dskolnick@tribtoday.com