I just got back from the Pomfret, Connecticut vote count. I'm a DTC member in this small town in the northeast corner of the state, traditionally heavily Republican. In last year's town elections, the Democrats swept to power. We've been heavily in support of Lamont (the committee vote was about 27-3) and de Stefano, and our DTC was phone banking for both candidates.
Lots of Lamont yard signs, and only one Joe sign in the whole town - and it appeared on town land at about 6:00 this morning, an apparent drive-by signing.
But I confess I was worried after the last week of the campaign. In his recent round of robocalls (I was getting two a day), Lieberman was doing what he had neglected for the whole race: giving voters a reason to vote for him. (Granted, he was lying and misrepresenting his positions in those calls, but it's not like that hasn't worked in the recent past.)
When I went to vote this morning, turnout was already high - close to 20% by 11:00 a.m. By midafternoon, it was 35%, and word came in that the surge in people shifting their voter registrations had given Pomfret, for the first time in memory, more Democrats than Republicans. (At the polls, we also got word that close to 50 people had been turned away because they weren't registered, or were Republican or unaffiliated. They were provided with forms so they can switch parties for next election.)
I voted, then made GOTV calls for a few hours, then came back to help out the DTC chair, standing in a sea of Lamont and de Stefano signs.
By the time the polls closed, we had over 50% participation - unheard of in a primary. We had 43 absentee ballots - a ridiculous total for such a small town. What's more, people were coming in smiling, energized, excited to vote Democratic. (Well, most of them were, anyway. We assumed the glum ones were Lieberman voters.)
We vote here on old-style, verifiable, curtain-and-lever machines. After the polls closed we grabbed sample ballots and waited for the machine verification totals and the count. (The guy calling out the number had to be the only person in Connecticut who couldn't pronounce any of the candidates' names.)
Governor's race came first:
John De Stefano 179 53.9%
Dan Malloy 153 46.1%
That about tracked with the polls. Lieutenant governor broke the other way, though; the town split the ticket:
Mary Messina Glassman 152 52.6%
Scott Slifka 137 47.4%
Not entirely surprising, since there was a lot of sentiment that the ticket was a little too male otherwise.
That left the big race. We were pretty sure it was going to be a Lamont victory based on the high turnout, but would it be a blowout, that might presage a statewide blowout that would keep Joe from an indy run? (Pomfret is a pretty conservative town, after all - the DTC broke strongly for Lamont, but this should have been Joe country if he'd bothered to visit us in the last 11 years.)
Ned Lamont 221 61.6%
Joe Lieberman 138 38.4%
Go us! the only strange thing was that one absentee ballot had no vote for senator on it. So at least one person out there (other than the candidates) actually cared more about the governor's race than the senate race.