Hingham voters buck the trend in presidential and US Senate picks

By Jessica Bartlett, Town Correspondent

Hingham voters went against the grain on Tuesday, backing presidential challenger Mitt Romney by a slight margin and favoring Incumbent and Republican US Senator Scott Brown over Democrat Elizabeth Warren.

According to preliminary results compiled by the Globe, Romney won Hingham by a margin of 7,231 to 6,750, over President Barack Obama. Hingham also went against the state by voting for Brown, who won 8,317 to Warren’s 5,778.

See more coverage of the Brown-Warren race here and more coverage of Election Day here.

According to Town Clerk Eileen McCracken, there were some issues with one ballot box on Tuesday, but everything else went well.

"We did have a problem with one of our machines. It kept collecting the ballots near the top of it and people’s ballots got stuck, so we did a lot of running up and down the gym. "It was just one of the precincts," McCracken said.

Overall, Hingham had 14,178, or 83.4 percent of the town's registered voters, come out to cast a ballot during the 2012 election.

"The lines were long and people were very patient. I commend them, in the early morning there was quite a wait. Someone told me they waited 35-40 minutes," McCracken said.

Despite the high turnout, the results were not as high as that in 2008, when 85 percent of registered voters came out.