Ventura County's Republican and Democratic parties look as if they'll keep sailing their current courses, after voters in each party re-elected most of their leaders in Tuesday's primary election.

Each county party is governed by a central committee, with members elected from each of the county's five supervisorial districts. Republican voters elected 21 representatives in five district elections, and Democrats elected 10 people in two contested districts.

"There were a couple of folks I would have liked to have seen get on, but for the most part it looks like everybody likes what's going on," said Mike Osborn, the chairman of the Republican Central Committee. He was re-elected to his 1st District seat, as was his wife, Mary.

Bill Gallaher, the Democratic Central Committee chairman, said he's happy to see a few new names on the committee roster but is disappointed that three of the five districts had no challengers.

"I've encouraged people to run for Central Committee, because it's so much better to have an election," he said. "I was glad to see it happen in those districts. I had hoped it would happen in my district."

Ventura County Democrats have been riding high this year, because they recently passed the Republicans in total registered voters in the county and now hold an advantage of just over 1 percentage point.

However, on Tuesday that registration lead did not translate to an edge at the polling places — turnout was higher among Republicans by 3 percentage points, and there were 3,619 more Republican ballots cast than Democratic ones.

"That didn't surprise me at all," Osborn said. "Republicans have always been the more dependable voters."

Gallaher said he wasn't drawing any conclusions from this week's election, because the turnout was so low. The county Elections Division's latest turnout estimate is about 26 percent, higher than election officials were predicting but still far below the usual numbers for a nonpresidential primary.

"Obviously, registration doesn't mean anything if you don't get them out to the polls," Gallaher said. "It's just really hard to decide anything from this primary. The turnout was so low, it was just amazing."