where the polls officially opened at 6 AM. Our polling place, for Woodlawn Precinct, is an elementary school less than half a mile from our home. I got there about 10 of 6, was the 4th person on line. By the time I voted there were 23 voters at the precinct. Since I usually vote early and absentee, I cannot say how heavy that is. Of the 23, 5 were African-American.
There were NO campaign workers. We are a somewhat large precinct, so I suppose that might be considered a bit odd. The only signage was for Trump and for Sanders, perhaps half a dozen signs each.
Arlington now uses paper ballots that are scanned. For the primary, you ask for either a Democratic or Republican ballot. All of the first four of us asked for Democratic ballots, but we are a heavily Democratic precinct in a heavily Democratic County.
In the 2008 Democratic primary, Obama had 834 to Clinton’s 454. In the general that Fall Obama carriedthe precinct 1319 to McCain’s 453.
We have one significant Black neighborhood in the precinct, and the school is located right on the edge of that precinct.
Arlington tends to be fairly liberal. At the first event Bernie did, which was non-partisan and sponsored by our Democratic Congressman Don Beyer, I saw almost all of the very active Dems and party leaders present. On the other hand, when the Northern Virginia office for Clinton opened up near the school where I teach, I saw a good chunk of older Democratic activists present. There has been phone-banking and door knocking organized locally.
I would suspect that Clinton will carry both our precinct and Arlington, just as she will comfortably carry Virginia, but in Arlington Bernie should have a decent showing, although I do not think he will significantly outperform how he does in the state: if her statewide margin is, say, 20, in Arlington it might be down to 15. Those are both guesses. There will be places in the state where Sanders will get blown out, and there are relatively few cities or counties where he will win, and perhaps none by large margins, especially if her margin statewide is at 20 percent or more.
Our polls close at 7. We should have all Arlington results by 8:30, and quite conceivable earlier than that. All voting in Virginia is by machine of one sort or another, so counting tends to accumulate fairly quickly.
Now back to a nap.
