Amherst, Massachusetts Votes: Super Tuesday 2012

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At 8:45 a.m., a lineup of "reserved for voters" parking spaces outside Amherst’s Bangs Center—the town’s  largest polling place—revealed one of rural Western Massachusetts’ secure wide-open spaces. That’s because the primary is a de facto Republican affair and  Republicans in the feistily Democratic college town are as scarce as declining tuitions at its colleges and university. A visit to the polling center revealed several dour douenas from the League of Women Voters hunkered down for a long haul (7 a.m. to 8 p.m.) of  linoleum watching.