Sorry if this has been diaried already, I'll delete if it has.
National Journal's Hotline Blog is bad news central for Joe.
See why over the flip.
First there's a story about the CT primary turning into a "donut" primary, meaning that the liberal suburbs are turning out but the blue collar cities are not. And that's good news for Ned.
In the Democratic redoubt of East Hartford, one of the state's most reliably Democratic towns, the turnout was 20% at 1 pm, reassuring Lamont's campaign that moderate, blue collar Democrats may not be as interested in supporting Lieberman as liberals in more affluent communities are in turning him out.
Then there's a story about ridiculously high turnout in Mansfield, CT, home to UCONN, which not only is reliably Democratic but is extremely anti-war. Despite the fact that we're talking about a college town in August, the town's Democratic Registrar Andrea Epling is calling turnout "unbelievable."
Epling said she and others in the Town Hall were digging through old primary results to find a comparison. She said the closest thing they could find was the '92 Dem PRESIDENTIAL contest when Jerry Brown upended Bill Clinton and 173K CT residents voted.
Epling reported that as of just after 1 p.m., Mansfield's three precincts were reporting turnout of 25.5%, 30% and 33%. And, she added, voter turnout had picked up since then.
Asked if turnout would thus crest the 50% mark, she replied, "Oh yes, it will probably get closer to 80%."
UPDATE
More from Hotline confirming the trend but as commenter points out, may be misleading since blue collar city workers may wait until after work to vote:
Two well-heeled towns, Chester, in the CT River Valley, and Old Saybrook, on the Long Island Sound, both report turnout of 46% -- as of 5 p.m.
Meanwhile, across the state and the class divide, registrars in the old industrial towns of Danbury and Waterbury say not a lot of folks are coming to the polls.
