Vineyarders will have four different elections this year. The presidential primary takes place on March 5, annual town elections start in the spring, state primaries are on Sept. 3 and the general presidential election on Nov. 5.

Vineyard voters will join their counterparts across the country at the polls Tuesday in a presidential election year expected to go down in history for unprecedented rancor, and an electorate on edge.

Martha’s Vineyard followed the mood of the state and the country Tuesday when thousands of voters trekked to the polls to help re-elect President Barack Obama to a second term and cast ballots for Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren and incumbent Cong. William Keating.

Vineyard voters came down decisively on the winning side of history on Tuesday, turning out in record numbers to help elect America’s first black President.

Seventy-odd years ago, Everett Poole recalls, the first Democrat appeared in Chilmark. He ran the post office.

“The reason he was a Democrat was that Franklin Roosevelt was President and those jobs were all political appointments. So he had to be a Democrat. He came from Maine,” said Mr. Poole.

“As the post office grew larger, they wanted a clerk, so his wife became a Democrat too.”

Vineyard election officials are expecting a record turnout for Tuesday’s election following a rush of new voter registrations and a huge number of absentee ballots already cast.

The number of absentee ballots as of yesterday was in some cases close to twice that normally seen at a presidential election, a sure sign, Island town clerks said, of an engaged electorate, and a likely indicator of an unprecedented turnout.

Following a frenzied weekend of rallies for two of the 2008 Democratic Presidential contenders, the third of the front runners, Barack Obama. slid quietly into the Vineyard early this week for aclosed-door high-ticket fundraiser and no fanfare.

The nation may be split down the middle after Tuesday's presidential election, but the Vineyard was anything but divided when it came to casting ballots for Democrats.

Voters on Martha's Vineyard came out in droves Tuesday, and by margins as wide as three to one, they threw their support behind Sen. John Kerry, the unsuccessful presidential contender, and sent incumbent Democrats back to the Massachusetts Legislature in the face of Republican challenges.

Sturdy brown envelopes, some of them mailed from as far away as the Netherlands, Italy and Russia, are stacked up tall on the desk of Wanda Williams, the town clerk in Edgartown.

Ask Ms. Williams or any of the Island's other five town clerks how things are going the week before Election Day, and you'll hear a deep sigh. They are swamped, not only with a surge of those brown envelopes containing absentee ballots but also with tallying up new voters.