Poll workers at the Cave Spring precinct. Photo by Elizabeth Watts Jones

Roanoke County has just weighed in and, like Salem, it’s turnout at 3 p.m. was also running behind its 2008 pace.

Registrar Judy Stokes says so far 52.13 percent of county voters have cast a ballot. At this point in 2008, 57.79 percent had.

Roanoke County is pretty consistently Republican. McCain took  just under 60 percent of the vote there four years ago, although a few precincts, most notably Hollins (near Hollins University) and Ogden (with a lot of apartment communities), were close.

A drop-off in a suburban locality such as Roanoke County is not something Repubicans would want to hear. We also saw the 3 p.m. turnout in Salem, another Republican locality, was down. However, Roanoke is strongly Democratic and it’s 10 a.m. turnout was down there, as well. (Still waiting on the city’s 3 p.m. report.) So it looks like turnout across the Roanoke Valley is off.