County officials say a lot of the votes for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in Tuesday's primary didn't come from Democrats. They also came from long-time Republicans who decided to cross party lines.

In St. Joseph County, the clerk’s office reported an increase in Democratic voters, but the increase there was nothing compared to more conservative counties nearby.

In Elkhart County, only 17,000 GOP ballots were cast in Tuesday's primary, compared to nearly 27,000 Democratic ballots. Republican Party leaders estimate 28 percent of those Democratic ballots came from Republican crossovers.

Joe Solis of Middlebury is a self-described conservative Republican in one of the most Republican counties in the state.

But when he went to the polls this week, he did something he's never done before.

"I crossed over and voted Democrat,” he told WSBT News.

He wasn't alone.

"A lot of people I work with said they did the same thing,” he said.

In fact, GOP leaders say 28 percent — more than a quarter of the Democratic ballots cast in Elkhart County Tuesday — came from Republicans.

“That's a large amount of crossover votes,” said Carol McDowell with the Elkhart County Republican Party. “We've never seen that before.”

So why the switch?

Solis says, for him, it's about the economy.

"In my opinion, the Republicans had eight years,” he said. “I want to give the Democrats a chance to see if it will make a change.”

Party leaders say the huge crossover was also because of the excitement over such an intense contest between Clinton and Obama, and a surprise visit to Elkhart by Obama two days before the election.

"So that generated some hoopla, I think,” McDowell said.

Republican Party officials still call John McCain a strong candidate for November.

But they admit they're concerned about what they've just seen — the possible bigger picture. They say a change within their own party may be long-overdue.

"I think the Republican Party needs to do what they haven't done in a while and that's go back to grassroots: get out and talk to people, day to day, talk the issues, don't talk character so much as issues, talk to people about what's really bothering them, what hurts them when they go home at night, what helps then when they go home at night," McDowell said. "That's what the Republican Party's got to address right now and I don't think we've been doing that as well as we could. And I think that's going to be our challenge between now and November.”

The other part of this story is the concern by some that these Republican crossovers are crossing over to hurt the Democrats, to prolong the primary and weaken the candidates, in order to help Republican John McCain in November.

Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh called it "Operation Chaos,” and on his show Wednesday he claimed victory. He said the Obama campaign, in a conference call with reporters Wednesday, mentioned "Operation Chaos" as a factor in the crossover.

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