State officials expecting record turnout for presidential primary
Connecticut is one of the 22 states holding primaries or caucuses on what is being billed as "Super Tuesday."
Polls in Connecticut opened at 6 a.m. today and are to remain open until 8 p.m. Turnout records could be broken, according to Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz.
Bysiewicz said local registrars were busy right up until yesterday's noon deadline to register.
From November 1, 2006 through January 31, more than 34,0000 new voters registered. More than 17,500 became Democrats and 6,300 registered to vote in the GOP primary.
Some 13,000 previously unafilliated voters switched to the Democrat Party while 3,600 unaffilated voters registered with the GOP, Bysiewicz said.
Bysiewicz was predicting voter turnout to be close to 50 percent -- higher than the 43.3 percent turnout for the closely watched 2006 Senate Democratic match-up between Sen. Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont.
Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton pushed Connecticut to center stage on the eve of the Super Tuesday primary, rallying supporters to bolster their campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Their stops -- Obama with a rousing nighttime rally in Hartford that drew more than 15,000 people and Clinton with a morning round-table chat about child poverty in New Haven -- underscored the state's importance in what's expected to be a fiercely fought campaign.
Polls in November put Connecticut strongly in Clinton's corner, but today's vote is expected to be close.
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