The crowd gathered for the announcement of the election results Tuesday night buzzed with the possibility that darkhorse candidate Kevin Cooke might defeat incumbent Mark Butler for the District 18 seat in the Georgia House of Representatives.

Despite consistent precinct wins across the county, Cooke called Butler before absentee ballots were announced at the David Perry County Administration Building to give his congratulations. After all votes were counted, he lost by an overall margin of 55 percent to 45 percent.

Butler began the night strong, taking a 47-vote lead after the first two precincts were announced in Carroll County. Both men would trade victories as the night wore on, the most lopsided of which was Butler’s more than 400-vote win in Haralson County. Cooke would press on, winning the East Carroll Recreation Center and the County Administrative precincts handily.

With 16 of the 32 polling places reporting, Butler’s lead in Carroll County had held but not grown. He was still up in the county by 47 votes.

His lead did swell momentarily with two-thirds of all the votes counted, but the momentum would swing back with Cooke’s victory in Mt. Zion.

After all the precincts and the absentee ballots and the early votes were counted -- nearly 2,500 votes altogether -- Butler had widened his lead, and his eventual margin of victory, to approximately 500 votes.

Butler admitted the race was a little too close for comfort.

“It was a lot tighter race than we’d hoped for,” Butler said. “But we knew if we had a low voter turnout, with us now being in a bad economy, the race would be tougher. I just want to thank all my supporters for coming out and people who spent their time campaigning with me and burning up shoe leather with me.”

With Haralson County voters coming out in full support of Butler, he said he owed a special “thank you” to them.

“We had extreme low turnout in Carrollton but good turnout in Haralson,” he said.

The estimated voter turnout for Carroll County was only slightly more than 20 percent of all registered voters, the lowest turnout for any major election in recent memory, Election Supervisor Patti Brown-Traylor said.