The Oregonian, which I'm not very happy with on account of their handling of David Wu's reelection bid, has a must-read today on voter registration in the state, breaking down the numbers into key constituencies. David Austin's "Voter signups setting a record" is long, but it nonetheless has a ton of useful information. He leads with this anecdotal info:

When Eric Sample of the Multnomah County Elections Division picked up the last of the new voter registration forms at the post office after the Tuesday registration deadline, he knew his office was in for a shock.

"They kept bringing out tray after tray after tray of the registration forms," Sample recalled. "I remember thinking: It's a good thing I brought the station wagon."

Sample said the more than 413,000 residents who signed up for the Nov. 2 general election already have eclipsed the record from 1996 by more than 5,000. Officials have several thousand more registration forms to count. "It's been overwhelming in terms of the absolute numbers," Sample said.

State elections officials said counties across the state are dealing with a record voter registration. Officials expect the statewide total of registered voters to eclipse the 2 million mark. In 1996 and 1998, elections officials recorded 1.96 million voters.

.04 million new voters might not sound like a large amount, but in a state that was decided by 6,000 votes last time around, 40,000 new voters is huge.

Statewide, about 32,690 students -- new voters or voters who had changed addresses since the last election -- registered through efforts of a coalition of student groups, including the Oregon Student Association, the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group and student governments at public universities and community colleges.

That topped the roughly 24,000 students registered before the 2000 election, said Arlie Adkins, communications director for the Oregon Student Association.

The nonpartisan effort began immediately after the May primary and netted the largest number of registrations -- 7,669 -- at the University of Oregon in Eugene. "This is really showing students that collectively they have quite a lot of power," he said.

Just to remind you, aside from the uber-Christian University of Portland, pretty much all of Oregon's major universities are quite left wing. Think Reed College. Think University of Oregon (where Animal House was filmed). Think Southern Oregon University. These are all very liberal schools, so sucha a large increase in college student registration bodes well for the Democrats.

Another source of new voters has been the state's steadily growing number of immigrants. The latest Census Bureau estimates show that in the past three years, Oregon's Latino population grew by nearly 20 percent, and the Asian American population increased by 16 percent [emphasis added].

Although not all new immigrants are U.S. citizens, many are becoming naturalized and joining voter rolls. A 2003 Democratic National Committee analysis found that twice as many Latinos in Oregon voted in the 2002 primary elections as did in the 2000 presidential election.

This year, community and party-based efforts have targeted Asian American, Latino and Russian-speaking voters.

These numbers speak for themselves.

The fact is that Oregon is a Democratic state, and it looks like Democratic turnout this year will be astronomical.

This also isn't just about Oregon. The same thing is happening in Pennsylvania; how is it possible that registration in Philadelphia increased by 70,000 voters--since April? Don't forget Ohio. New registered voters in Cuyahoga County, home to Cleveland, are up 150%

If you're getting discouraged by the polls, fret not. These polls are missing something big, and we'll see it in two and a half weeks.