Nevertheless, turnout in western Montana appeared to rock previous primary elections. Polling judges around Missoula reported strong traffic all day, especially around late morning and the lunch hour. In the 2004 presidential primary, 37.2 percent of the county's voters participated. This time, totals were pushing close to 55 percent with votes still being counted at press time.
But the chance to be the deciding vote in the race between Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Clinton of New York fizzled when national news reports stated in midafternoon that Obama had collected enough Democratic delegates to win.
“I was making calls to get out the vote, and people were telling me it was a moot point - Hillary was conceding,” said Cindy Weese, director of the Missoula YWCA and a Clinton supporter. “I was telling them, ‘Well, I'm at campaign headquarters and it's not over yet.' ”
Her colleague Joyce Mphande-Finn said she was amazed when she saw Whoopi Goldberg announce an Associated Press story on national TV that Clinton was giving up, only to come back minutes later and say the report was incorrect.
“It's like all the pundits wanted to influence the election from the beginning,” Mphande-Finn said. “I really loved it when she (Clinton) said she was not going to make the decision tonight.”
Local Republicans may have suffered from mixed messages Tuesday night, too. While their presidential race has been nailed down for months, there were still a couple of statewide races needing attention. Yet the GOP turnout in Missoula County was barely a quarter of the Democratic activity.
Local Republican Party Central Committee chairman Will Deschamps said matters may have gotten confused between the party's statewide caucus, which was limited to party leadership, and the primary, which was open to anyone who selected a Republican ballot.
“We didn't do much get-out-the-vote this time,” Deschamps said. “We're going to need to work on that before November. But there weren't a lot of contested races to get people involved.”
The caucus effort did do wonders for the local party's foot-soldier participation, he said. In the last general election, the local party had about 40 registered precinct captains. This year, that jumped to 97. While some of those may have been pulling for unsuccessful presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul, about 80 of them stayed committed enough to re-register for their position in the June election.
“We're happy to have them, especially the young Ron Paul supporters,” Deschamps said. “If you want to change something, you have to do it from inside, not outside throwing rocks.”
Another change this year was the number of last-minute voter registrations. Missoula County recorded 486 new voters Tuesday, according to county elections supervisor Debbe Merseal. In November 2006, in an off-year general election, there were more than 900 people filling out voter cards on Election Day.
Merseal said that could be the difference between an election held while college students swelled the first-time voter ranks, and this June, when the University of Montana is out of session.
Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com.
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