Polls opened this morning at 6am Central time in Indiana and close tonight at 6pm. In a sign of the sort of turnout we should expect today, here's one anecdote from the Indianapolis metro area:
More voters have turned out in the first half hour than usually turn out in a half day, said Democrat precinct committeeman Cordelia Lewis-Burkes.
IN Secretary of State Todd Rokita has said that based on registration numbers and early voting and absentee turnout, they prepared for today as though it were a general election. Hotline has some numbers:
-- More than 140K people registered to vote in Indiana since the last election, and more than 160K people updated their registrations. The largest surge the state has ever seen.-- The state received 167,783 absentee ballots by its noon deadline today, marking a "milestone" in absentee participation, Rokita said. [...]
-- Since 2004, Rokita estimates that the state has added about 600,000 people to their voter rolls. He said that many counties are preparing as if this were a general election.
In some potential good news for Barack Obama, as of Friday, a disproportionate percentage of the absentee ballots, 20%, came from just three counties, Marion, Monroe and Lake, all of which should go for Obama today. On the other hand, while people have touted the fact that Indiana is adjacent to Illinois and overlaps with the Chicago media market as plusses for Obama, on Hardball yesterday they were talking about how Clinton's internals show her even with Obama in northwest Indian, where Obama should be running away with it. The reason: Chicago local media is still covering Reverend Wright on a daily basis.
So what result are we likely to see tonight? Not shockingly, I'll go on the record predicting a Clinton win, yet another opportunity for John Zogby to eat some crow (in his final tracking poll, Zogby once again has Obama up 2 points.) One of the main reasons Zogby's likely to be off tonight, check out this doozy from his poll analysis:
In Indiana, the race is all tied up among women who plan to vote in the Democratic presidential primary--at 44% each...
Really? Survey USA's final poll, which has Clinton up 12%, shows her leading among women by a 60-38 margin. Who are you going to believe?
The question is will it be a double digit victory for Clinton as many are predicting. I think 10% is the best margin she can hope for, but my instinct is that it will come in just under that. The folks over at Blue Indiana seem to agree.
Are you on the ground in Indiana? What are you seeing? And even if you're not, what's your gut telling you?
Update [2008-5-6 12:48:51 by Todd Beeton]:This is interesting, via Hotline:
Polls in Indiana close early at 6 p.m. Elections officials at each polling site have to designate "a shoot," which is about 50-feet from where voters enter the polling area to vote. Anyone who wants to get into vote has to be within the "shoot" by 6 p.m. How this area is chosen is arbitrary depending on election monitors. Watch for that to be a possible issue up in Northwest Indiana, which should field a large majority of the Democratic vote and would be likely territory for any lawsuits to keep the polls open longer.
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