Whoa

 My town is a red town in a blue state. It's a suburban town of about 25,000 and voting lines are usually pretty short. Elections rarely mean much, as Republicans win all the local offices and Democrats win all the state and national offices. Voter efficacy, in other words, is very low.

Since polls opened early this morning, lines have been out the door and around the side of the school building. I've never seen anything close to what I saw when my son and I stood in lines for 35-40 minutes to cast our votes. Now, Connecticut had "no-excuse" absentee voting, not "early voting," like many other states, and it could be that very few voters took advantage of early opportunities to vote. As of October 26th, roughly 20% of registered voters in the state had voted. That's a lot, but it's not like other states we have seen.

Still, there have been 30-40 minute waits at our polling station (apparently the waits are shorter in the more blue collar, Trumpy part of town, but that's just hearsay in line). That has to mean a remarkable surge in voter turnout. Here, in a town where your vote usually doesn't matter.

The question everyone is asking is about voter turnout today. How many people will vote and will they lean Republican or Democrat? If Democrats can break even on voting today, their perceived advantage in early voting should carry them to a sizable victory. The line today was also much younger than it usually is. Younger people don't tend to vote, again because they think their vote doesn't matter.

Clearly, people are more motivated to vote than ever before. We could shatter turnout records, if what I saw today is repeated across the country.

Record turnout is usually understood to help Democrats. Republican voters always show up, which is why they punch above their overall popularity. So who are these infrequent or new voters? People fired up by Trump? Or - and I have to think this is more likely - people fed up with the chaos and the cruelty of a president whose only setting is "offend."

Still, all our models could be thrown out the window if we have record turnout, which it looks like we will have.