When Senate District 25 DFL Chair Shawn Groth was asked to compare attendance at Tuesday’s caucuses to the turnout in 2008, he said, “It’s really not comparing apples to apples.”

More accurately, it might be comparing one apple to a bushel basket of oranges.

Unofficial figures show that 273 residents took part in Rice County precinct meetings in Northfield, Faribault and Forest Township on Tuesday night. Of that total, 169 attended the caucuses for the eastern portion of District 25 at Northfield Middle School.

Roughly 3,200 residents took part in District 25 precinct caucuses four years ago, when the race for the Democratic nomination for president between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton caught the attention of much of the nation.

“Looking back, 2008 was such a unique year,” said Groth. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime event. Looking at the past presidential years, nothing measures up to 2008.”

About 70 percent of District 25 caucus participants voted for Obama in the 2008 straw poll.

This year’s straw poll offered two choices: vote for President Obama or be uncommitted. Twenty-three participants at the county DFL caucuses voted “uncommitted.”

The dropoff in this year’s caucus attendance surprised no one, Groth said.

“The numbers ended up being around what I expected,” he said. “I was hoping for more people, but I expected about what we got.”

What did surprise Groth was the high level of excitement and interest shown by the residents in attendance in Northfield and Forest Township, the two sites he visited.

“In my opinion, it was so much better than in past year,” he said. “The caucuses of 2008 were hard to beat because there were so many people, but we were not able to move on with the caucusing process. It got to be a crowd control issue. This year, though, we saw people who are very interested in being involved in the party and in local politics.”

Groth credits former Sen. Kevin Dahle and former Rep. David Bly—both are candidates to return to the State Capitol—with delivering speeches that energized Northfield caucus-goers.

“I didn’t see them speak, but I heard they really fired up the crowd,” he said. "What we lacked in attendance, we made up for in excitement and enthusiasm."