Turnout and passion in my heavily Democratic neighborhood appears to be way down from 2008.
I lined up to vote at 6:50 a.m. this morning at my polling station in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood. The line was about 70 people long, largely white, liberal and affluent. The two people behind me in line commented how at the same time of day in 2008, the line was already stretching around the corner onto Wisconsin Avenue — which would have made it, by my estimate, at least 300 people long. That’s consistent with my own memory of voting at this same polling station four years ago.
The people waiting in line also remarked about how somber and quiet the mood in the voting line was this year compared to 2008, when the atmosphere was much more festive. That’s absolutely true.
By the time I left the polling station at 7:30 a.m., the line had grown to around 150 people, but the mood remained somber.
Charles Curran is a technology venture capital investor in Washington, D.C.