By press time, Athol’s results for Tuesday’s presidential primary election were not available. However, the rest of the region appeared to be divided between Democratic front runners Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, along with Republican incumbent Donald Trump.
Election day saw 1,493 people vote in Orange out of the town’s 5,015 registered voters — or roughly 29 percent.
Of the 1,117 voters in Orange that turned in Democrat ballots, 428 voted for Sanders, 318 voted for Joe Biden and 181 voted for Warren.
On the opposite side of the aisle, Trump received 323 votes and Bill Weld received 32 votes.
In New Salem, 44 percent of voters turned out to the polls, with 354 voters casting a ballot out of 797 registered voters.
Warren narrowly beat Sanders in New Salem with a total of 96 votes to 91, respectively. Biden came in with 84 votes.
Thirty-seven people voted for Trump and 11 cast their votes for Weld on New Salem’s Republican ballots, of which there was a total of 50.
In Phillipston, 407 voters of 1,235 cast their ballots, a showing of about 32 percent.
Sanders topped Trump with 109 votes to the incumbent’s 105 in Phillipston. Biden came in third with 82 votes.
Comparatively, in 2016, Sanders received 945 votes in Athol to Trump’s 519. In Orange, 744 people voted for Sanders and 399 voted for Trump. A total of 1,895 votes were cast in Orange in 2016 out of 4,765 registered voters, a 39 percent voter turnout compared to this year’s 29 percent.