More manageable (read: lower?) turnout

Our latest exit polls have been released: the Real GW’s Morgan Corr ‘07 is still in the lead, almost breaking 33 percent of the vote. Forty percent is needed to avert a run-off. GWUnited’s Elliott Rozenberg ‘08 and Lamar Thorpe ‘07 are in a dead heat for second.

Some other notes from the day:

• The sample size of this batch is 1100. The majority of these votes is coming from the Marvin Center computer lab, where we’ve been hanging out for the entire day. We also have a sampling from the barely-attended Funger Hall–which has only seen 26 people all day–and 1957 E Street. We reported earlier that a laptop was enroute to the Funger Hall location for students to check their GWid; turns out there is no wireless, so not-so-much.
• We’re at the Law School too: law students are voting mostly for the SBA’s endorsed candidate, Corr. About 150 law students voted as of 7:00 p.m. Our reporters have seen voters take the slip of paper with the SBA’s endorsement on it (Corr and GWUnited’s Josh Lasky ‘07) and fill out their ballots based off of the SBA’s recommendation.
• One law student we talked to said that she and her classmates “have a lot of faith in the SBA,” particularly on the issue of the money collected from their student fees coming back to them. She said that law students trust what the SBA recommends.
• We feel that our exit polls are more accurate than they were last year, mainly because the turnout seems a lot lower. We were worried this morning that there would be too many people at the various polling locations, expecting last year’s enthusiasm plus some. But the majority of people are coming to the one Marvin Center location, and the number of people coming out is smaller than last year. Most of the people passing us on their way out are telling us who they voted for.
• As for the low turnout, we have been astonished all day as to the lack of publicity surrounding this election. Since the morning tour of polls when we saw that no location was clearly marked, we have seen that the JEC is somewhat unorganized and is fixing things along the way. For example, students rarely know that the GWid is needed for some locations. They get to Funger and turn around because they can’t vote there. In other locations, students seem lost: signs weren’t posted until after noon, after we told passing members of the JEC that people don’t know where to vote. In fact, we have found ourselves telling voters how to vote when they get to the polling locations. It probably doesn’t help that there are no JEC members at the polls directing people what to do, leaving it to the sometimes confused paid volunteer poll watchers to manage the voters.

Just some oberservations from our posts around the campus. Stay tuned to one final exit poll update when the polls close at 9 p.m.