You can’t always tell a ton from turnout anecdotes, although looking back to New Jersey, hearing that morning turnout was great in GOP-leaning and swing precincts and lousy at Democratic ones was a useful indicator. In today’s Massachusetts race, the usual thinking has been scrambled several ways. Usually you would expect low turnout in a mid-January special election, but the race obviously has dominated the news and generated enormous attention and entusiasm. Normally, low turnout would be good for the GOP and high turnout would be good for Democrats, but with Brown polling so surprisingly well (and winning a lot more than the usual share of Democrats) maybe high turnout is good for him.

From Winchester:

I know you always post turnout anecdotes on election day– here is mine. I live in Winchester, just north of the city. Long line this morning at 7:00 AM when the polls opened– approximately 40 people were waiting to vote. With the exception of the 2008 presidential election, where there were 100 or so people in line, I haven’t seen early morning turnout approach this.
High turnout isn’t necessarily uniform across the state. One of my co-workers (who prides himself on being one of the few conservative voices in Jamaica Plain) said that turnout was exceptionally low– much lower than the presidential election. Given Jamaica Plain’s strong blue tilt, it will be interesting to see how turnout evolves over the course of today.

From downtown Boston, some worries:

I live in downtown Boston and was coming back from a weekend in Vermont yesterday when I spotted a car about fifty yards in front of me on I-93 that had “SCOTT BROWN FOR U.S. SENATE” scrawled on the rear windshield. I pulled a little closer and saw that “VOTE SCOTT BROWN” was also scrawled on each of the two side windows. Knowing this was probably a once in a lifetime experience in Massachusetts, I pulled alongside the car, honked, and gave the guy a thumbs up. The driver, a guy about my age (late 20’s), smiled and returned the thumbs up. It sounds stupid, but that moment was probably my favorite of 2010 so far. I’ve never had an experience like that in Massachusetts, and I’ve lived here my whole life. It’s so nice finally not to have to hide my support for a candidate.
Of course, this morning when I went to the polling station all that happiness was dashed. I got married last year, and my new wife changed her last name, and along with it, her voter registration. When we went to check in, she appeared twice on the voter registration – once with her maiden name and once with her married name. For the last hour, visions of giddy liberals voting 2-3 times each have been terrorizing me. My wife could easily vote twice (especially since they don’t check ID’s – how could you when that could possibly disenfranchise lower income voters, right?) were it not felonious and dishonest I bet my name still appears on the registry rolls in my hometown, even though I changed my registration four years ago.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I’m legitimately worried that Scott Brown could win this race and still lose it…
On a brighter note…I live in arguably the most liberal neighborhood in downtown Boston (I’ll never forget the look on the Obama canvasser’s face when he came by my apartment last year and I told him I was voting for McCain). When I got to the polls this morning, my wife and I were the only two people there other than the poll workers. In November, the line was out the door and halfway down the block.