Breaking Down Tuesday’s U.S. Senate Primary Race By The Numbers

Democrat Chris Coons and  Republican Lauren Witzke will move on to face one another in the November general election.

Just over 32% of registered voters cast a ballot in Tuesday’s state primary elections. Out of Delaware’s 550,288 registered voters only 177,519 (32.26%) voted. 173,819 of those voters cast a ballot in the U.S. Senate race.

Chris Coons received 33,690 more votes in Tuesday’s Democratic primary race than Tom Carper received in the 2018 U.S. Senate state primary election. His opponent, Jessica Scarano,  also outpaced Carper’s 2018 primary opponent, Kerry Evelyn Harris, receiving 3,129 more votes than Harris did in the 2018 election.

DEMOCRATIC PARTY Machine Votes Absentee Votes Total Votes Percent Votes
THOMAS R CARPER 50879 2756 53635 64 . 58 %
KERRI EVELYN HARRIS 28323 1084 29407 35 . 42 %

In the GOP primary race for U.S. Senate, newcomer Lauren Witzke won with over 30,000 votes. Witzke defeated James Demartino, receiving 7,432 more votes


Witzke received 5,411 more votes than Rob Arlett did when he ran as the GOP candidate for U.S. Senate in the 2018 primary election. She also received over 18,000 votes more that the other two 2018 primary candidates combined. In the 2018 primary 37,870 votes were cast for the GOP candidates for U.S. Senate. On Tuesday GOP candidates received 53,958 voted for the same office.

REPUBLICAN PARTY Machine Votes Absentee Votes Total Votes Percent Votes
ROBERT B ARLETT 24197 1087 25284 66 . 76 %
ROQUE ROCKY DE LA FUENTE 1909 89 1998 5 . 27 %
EUGENE J TRUONO JR 10079 509 10588 27 . 97 %

Votes by County

Over 3,600 voters that cast a ballot in the primary elections did not vote for any candidate in the U.S. Senate race.  In Wilmington’s District 3, which covers the center of the city, around five percent of voters that cast a ballot did not vote for a Senate candidate.

Turnout for the 2018 primary election was as follows:

Democratic Voter Turnout = 25.38 %
Republican Voter Turnout = 19.66 %

Although Coons and Witzke were not directly competing against each other in the primary she did rack up more votes than the Coons in six districts.  That being said, Coons received 56,630 more votes than Witzke on Tuesday.

November’s general election lineup for the U.S. Senate race:
Democrat Chris Coons
Republican Lauren Witzke
Independent Party Mark Turley
Libertarian Nadine Frost