Okay. The DP has been on the campaign trail for the past few hours and we’ve seen some interesting developments.

At the primary Princeton polling station, there were a lot of very mixed views about voter turnout. At 400 voters by around 4 o’clock, the precinct was hardly representative of the nearly 1100 voters registered in the district. Speaking to the VP of the College Dems, it appeared that voter turnout was low, and not nearly as high as they were anticipating. During typical national elections the turnout, he said, was typically very high (around 500 by 4 PM).

THEN, we spoke with the precinct worker who was handling voter numbers and recording turnout. The precinct worker with whom we spoke was passionately convinced that the NJ county authority was unprepared for the turnout. “They only gave us 200 ballots for registered Democrats,” he said. “I’m going crazy in there handling this.” He believed voter turnout was, in fact, what he had anticipated personally, but NOT what authorities had prepared for. The poll worker was filling out ballot information by hand.

Two different stories. One polling station. Interesting, to say the least.

We also shadowed a Princeton Dems volunteer as she went door-to-door trying to get students to vote. They have apparently been doing this routine for the past week, and had the goal of reaching every dorm TWICE before the end of election day. It might be paying off too, as most students we talked to had either voted earlier or were literally on their way.

Finally, Reps versus Dems. The DP is still waiting to sit down with the Republican president on campus, but when I spoke to him earlier today, the extent of the GOP get-out-the-vote appeared to be an email sent this morning to Republicans on their listserv. Compare that to the Democrats systematic, dorm-to-dorm campaign, and it’s not hard to see where the energy in this election appears to be coming from.

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