So did all the campus registration drives, rides to polls and signed pledges to vote amount to anything on Election Day?

Depends on who you ask.

The day after the election, young voter groups touted information, however murky, that they say proves their work paid off.

Registrars reserved judgment, pointing out that early turnout figures could be interpreted many different ways.

Specific data about the age of voters on Tuesday won't be available for about three months. But a quick look at youth-heavy precincts in the New River Valley show some increase in the total number of voters, while the percentage of registered voters who turned out remained virtually flat.

This despite efforts by youth voter advocacy groups Virginia 21 and the PIRG New Voters Project to get young people to vote.

Virginia 21, an advocacy group started 2½ years ago to represent the state's young voters, registered 7,358 people and contacted an additional 25,000 people during this year's campaign, according to spokesman Dave Solimini.

The New Voters Project, a nationwide project that visited Virginia for the first time this year after registering people in several states for the 2004 election, registered 7,000 people statewide, mostly college students. About 1,500 Virginia Tech students and 224 Radford University students registered to vote as part of the program.

On Wednesday, the New Voters Project released a statement explaining that, while detailed information wasn't available, turnout numbers from precincts around universities in the state showed significant increases.

Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Virginia Tech students Aaron Thomas (center) and Chris Horning (right) register to vote in Virginia at a registration table run by the New Voters Project on the drill field in Blacksburg Wednesday. Susmita Chakrabo (left) is a volunteer with the organization.

While the total numbers of voters in the three precincts in Blacksburg increased between 5.3 percent and 15.6 percent compared with 2001, the percentage of registered voters fell slightly.

Project Director Dave Rosenfeld said percentages may drop as groups get more people to register, but the group isn't focused on percentages.

"We would love it if every single student who registered goes ahead and votes," he said. "But in the end, the thing that matters is just the overall number of people who are voting."

Montgomery County Registrar Randy Wertz said that with no exit polls, the true story won't be known until the state processes votes from all localities in about three months.

In Radford's east precinct, the percentage of registered voters who voted went up 2 percent but lagged behind the city as a whole. About 50 percent of registered voters went to the polls to vote in the race for governor as well as well-publicized races for sheriff and commonwealth's attorney.

"So much attention was drawn to the race locally," Radford voter registrar Tracy Howard said. "You could not miss the race. You absolutely knew there was an election [Tuesday]."

Howard, who ran into problems with a registration drive organized by the New Voters Project, said the east precinct typically has a low voter turnout because of students living off campus who don't vote.

Last month, Howard sent notices asking for the residences of 340 students who listed campus or post office box addresses on registration applications. One student, who was ex-military, successfully registered to vote and 13 other students were denied. The rest of the notices went unreturned.

Solimini of Virginia 21 said the information cited by the New Voters Project isn't very useful.

Virginia 21, which had chapters at 15 colleges statewide, said most of its work is done in processing absentee ballot requests. Most college students don't vote in the locality where they go to school, he said.

"The vast majority of people who are systematically away from home on Election Day are college students," he said.

So Virginia 21 pointed out a surge in absentee voting this year.

From Northern Virginia to Lynchburg, absentee voting was up anywhere from 18 to 68 percent compared with 2001.

"Students and young voters are the new required check box in Virginia politics," he said.

Howard had a different interpretation of absentee ballots in Radford nearly doubling from 2001 -- more elderly people who couldn't leave their homes to go to the polls.

Flat turnout

While Montgomery County and Radford saw slight increases in voter turnout Tuesday, precincts around Virginia Tech actually saw slight decreases in percentage of registered voters when compared with the last gubernatorial election. In Radford, the east precinct saw a percentage increase on par with the city as a whole but still lagged behind the other two precincts in percentage turnout of voters.