Despite a third-place finish statewide, Mitt Romney won Warren County in Tuesday’s presidential primary by scoring wins in traditional Republican territory.

Meanwhile, voting issues locally were a bare minimum in Warren, while turnout was testy for those wanting to vote Republican in Claiborne County.

The former Massachusetts governor won 1,637 votes to Rick Santorum’s 1,200, a margin buoyed by a 104-vote win in the Culkin precinct. Newt Gingrich took 1,198 votes countywide. Ron Paul had 195 votes to round out the list of candidates on Mississippi’s ballot who are actively campaigning.

Romney’s plurality in Warren County fit in with victories in several counties on the state’s western flank, in Hinds and in the populous GOP bastions of Rankin and Madison counties. Santorum built his narrow statewide victory in several northeast Mississippi counties and solid wins in DeSoto and Lauderdale counties.

President Barack Obama, unchallenged for renomination, received 2,757 votes from Warren County Democrats. Thirty-five write-in votes were recorded for president on the Democratic ballot, compared to three on the Republican side.

Turnout in Warren County was 23 percent, fairly high for a presidential primary but short of the 26 percent that turned out four years ago for Obama’s march to the nomination versus former Sen. Hillary Clinton. Including 254 absentees, 7,237 ballots were cast out of 31,227 registered. Republicans cast 4,292 ballots for president, while Democrats cast 2,951 in the contest.

U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson breezed to another nod from Democrats to represent the 2nd Congressional District. He took 87 percent of the vote districtwide and 85 percent in Warren County, with 2,500 votes in the county’s 22 precincts to former Greenville mayor Heather McTeer’s 423. Thompson faces Republican Bill Marcy and independent Cobby Mondale Williams in November. Marcy lost to Thompson two years ago.

U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker scored a similarly easy win over opponents Allen Hathcock and Roger Maloney Tuesday, with 89 percent of the vote statewide and 91 percent in Warren County. He faces Albert N. Gore Jr., chair of the Oktibbeha County Democratic Party, who won 56 percent of the vote statewide and 62 percent in Warren County.

Warren County’s results came in quickly and smoothly compared to last year’s fall election, slowed by hand counts of absentee ballots and lengthy recount of the tax collector’s race. Nineteen of 22 precincts accumulated poll votes on electronic ballot cards before taking them to the courthouse. The same scanner that failed to read 68 affidavit ballots for tax collector ran flawlessly Tuesday when absentees were fed into it, which election adviser Donald Oakes chalked up to better-marked compared to the massive state and county-level election cycle.

“They’re not marked outside the lines,” he said. “(In the state election), there’s more opportunity for that.”

Of the 254 absentees cast, 117 were from Republicans, said Patty Mekus, who, in an ironic twist, spent the night counting absentee ballots alongside fellow GOP officials in the courthouse lobby. Mekus lost the tax collector’s race by 56 votes to Antonia Flaggs-Jones last November after more than a week recounting unscannable absentee ballots. On new election forms this year, each party chair in Mississippi must attest all absentee, emergency, affidavit, and any hand-counted ballots are put into the state election management database and signed forms emailed to the Secretary of State’s Office.

In Claiborne County, Romney won 65 of 180 votes cast by Republicans — but not before the Mississippi Republican Party sent officials from its Jackson office to provide ballots.

Four precincts, including ones at the National Guard Armory and at the county’s multipurpose building, received ballots after pleas from the public and officials, said Kaitlyn Colson, the state party’s director of member relations. Colson said the snafu resulted from Claiborne’s Republican Party chairman Wilbur Harpole’s resignation this year.

When reached, Harpole said sparse turnout for the GOP in the heavily Democratic county is common and a lack of poll workers sped his departure.

“It’s real hard to keep poll workers here,” Harpole said.