I just stopped by Temple’s campus, where the non-partisan Pennsylvania Public Independent Research Group was busing students to the polls every 20-30 minutes.

When I arrived around 11:30, the turnout had been pretty small.

“College kids don’t get up this early,” says Erica Briant, a 23-year-old recent graduate who trains student leaders in Pennsylvania and surrounding states in how to get young people civically engaged. Briant says PIRG has registered 1,000 students at Temple, Bryan Mawr and Haverford since last November.

Though the buses weren’t filling up just yet, a volunteer at a nearby polling place estimated 10 of the 40 voters this morning were Temple students.

“If the numbers continue at 25% of voters, that’s really good,” says Sujatha Jahagirdar, the 31-year-old program director of the Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project. Jahagirdar predicted more students would hit the polls after morning classes.

When asked about the youth turnout this year, Jahagirdar said it’s likely to be high in Pennsylvania, but that the percentage of young voters has been on the rise since 2000. Between 2000 and 2004, the rate of voters under 30 rose 9% - twice the rate of the general population. Jahagirdar also attributes the rise to candidates paying more attention to young voters.

“I think they saw what happened in 2004 and thought ‘Hmm… we might have something here.’ If you pay attention to young people, they turn out,” she says. Jahagirdar said the use of technology in getting out the youth vote has also had an impact on youth involvement, adding that the Obama campaign has been particularly effective in this regard.

Judging from the sentiments on Temple’s campus, she’s right. Of the 20-25 students I spoke with who were voting today (which was the majority), all of them were Obama supporters.

“Where are all the Hillary people?” one sophomore asked a group of six of her friends in the school’s student center cafeteria.

“They don’t want Philadelphia,” one of her friends replied. “I’ve seen zero campaigning here.”

Outside the student center, a Temple Students for Obama table was set up, and several students were walking around, encouraging their peers to vote. No one I asked was aware of a similar presence of students supporting Clinton.

“Obama and Clinton are very similar policy-wise, so what’s important to me is Obama’s charisma, passion, and ability to get everyone involved and unite, especially young people,” said Kevin Maggio, a member of Temple Students for Obama. “They are the people we need involved in the future of politics because we are the future.”

Maggio said the polling his group had conducted showed Temple students support Obama by a four to one margin.

Still, it remains to be seen how much of an impact young people will have in today’s election. One student said she thought more students had voted in Temple’s student government election, also taking place today, than in the primary. Another student said he wasn’t voting today because he “doesn’t think it makes a difference.”

Jahagirdar, Briant and the student PIRG’s would like to prove him wrong.