MANCHESTER VOTING.

At a church on Elm Street -- Manchester's main drag -- at about 5 this afternoon, the parking lot was full and voters formed a long line to be part of what election officials are calling exceptionally heavy turnout. Manchester Selectman Paul Allard, who represents the ward, told me that roughly 3,700 people had cast ballots by around 4 p.m., which he termed very heavy turnout. The crowd, he said, had started in the morning and had not abated at any point during the day. The 5 p.m. turnout included a large number of parents with their small children in tow.

Representatives of all the campaigns stood in the parking lot holding signs for their respective candidates, even Fred Thompson, whose "invisible man" strategy in New Hampshire does not seem to be generating notable successes. Surprisingly, the one campaign not represented in the sign-holding scrum was Obama's. My unscientific poll of three voters, however, turned up three votes for Obama, so perhaps there's an inverse relations between signs and votes.

There was something counter-Heisenbergian about the spectacle, however. Not only were voters being asked their preference by exit pollsters, but CNN and some local TV crews were also filming and interviewing them as they left the polls. According to Heisenberg, when we observe the individual particle, we miss the wave. But whatever the media may be missing up here, it's not the Obama tsunami.

--Harold Meyerson