Montgomery, AL – More than three-tenths of Alabama's registered voters turned out for the state's first experiment at combing the presidential and state primaries in March.
Unofficial returns from Tuesday's election showed that 821,853 of Alabama's 2.63 million registered voters participated, or 31.2 percent.
It didn't break the record of 42.6 percent set in the 2008 presidential primary, but it replaced the old second place mark of 29 percent for the 1992 presidential primary.
The turnout was slightly better than the 28.9 percent that Alabama's top election official, Secretary of State Beth Chapman, had predicted. But after she made that prediction, she said the closeness of the GOP presidential race could push the turnout higher.
The turnout for the Republican primary was three times greater than the Democratic primary.
(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)