A direct comparison serves no purpose. More voters chose the Republican line because of the competitive, high-profile primary races for U.S. Senate (Hoekstra vs. Durant) and the 11th Congressional District (Bentivolio vs. the Cassis write-in effort).

For a more apples-to-apples comparison, try taking the percentage each woman received out of all votes cast. The write-ins and non-voters (aka undervotes) are an indicator of how deep a candidate's support is among base voters.

For example, in my precinct (Northville City #2), Crawford received 379 votes, but there were also 2 write-ins and and 128 who didn't vote at all; that's 74.46% (379/509) in an uncontested primary as an incumbent with far greater name recognition.

On the Democratic side in that same precinct, Gwen Markham received 203 votes, with 62 undervotes; or 76.6% (203/265) in her uncontested primary.

Put simply, the new 9th District Commissioner won't be decided based on Tuesday's results. There's 90 days between now and the general election, and a lot can and will happen.

The primary election has an entirely different set of restrictions than a general election. A voter can only vote for one party or another - otherwise their ballot gets tossed out. Why does the Northville Patch report on a primary's numbers as if it were a general election? The poll numbers only reflect how many of each party supported their nominated candidates. Perhaps the Northville Patch can write a follow-up article that points this out. It is strange to have a picture of both Crawford candidates as part of this article. Both the Markham and Tindall campaigns can provide pictures to the media.

You both have a valid point. I'm currently crunching the numbers and will have the story updated soon.

Here's a breakdown of how many votes each candidate received compared to the total votes cast for each party: http://novi.patch.com/articles/primary-election-results-oakland-county-commissioner