There may be some new faces at the polls in November, and they could throw this year’s election into a tailspin.

More than 13,000 people have registered to vote in Hamilton County since January, county officials report.

Those new voters represent a nearly 7 percent increase in the county’s voter rolls, said Charlotte Mullis, chief deputy for the Hamilton County Election Commission.

“This is unreal. That’s all I can say. This election is really going to be different,” said Ms. Mullis, a 26-year employee of the election commission.

About 9,000 people registered in Hamilton County before the 2004 presidential elections. Statewide in 2004, some 263,000 new voters registered, according to figures from The Associated Press.

Statewide figures were unavailable last week. Local election commissions only report their numbers in December and in June, but figures from Shelby County alone show there were 64,000 voter registration applications there since the first of the year.

Davidson County has been flooded with 10,000 applications in just the last month, officials there report.

Among Hamilton County’s newest registered voters are Mick and Darlene Anderson, of Sale Creek. They voted by absentee ballot while on tour in the U.S. Marines. But when they moved to the Tennessee Valley 12 years ago, they stopped voting regularly.

“I didn’t really know where to register until I saw it in the newspaper,” Mrs. Anderson said. “I’ve always wanted to vote, and I know my dad will be proud because he took me to register when I was 18 years old.”

Mrs. Anderson didn’t want to disclose which presidential candidate she is supporting, but she said this election in particular is very important.

Democrats contend the increase in new voters bodes well for their party and their presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. Local party workers have registered more than 2,000 voters since the first of the year. Their goal is to register another 1,000 before Oct. 6, the deadline to register in Tennessee. The election is Nov. 4.

“I think in years past voter registration has been a part of the ‘get out the vote push,’ but this year it is markedly different because the Obama campaign has such a grassroots campaign,” said John Bailes, the Hamilton County Democratic Party chairman.

Local Republicans have a more passive effort to draw out new voters, said Connie Weathers, the Republican Party chairwoman. The GOP provides information to anyone who comes into party headquarters, but they aren’t going door to door to find new voters, she said. There’s no way of telling whether those people actually will support the GOP candidate or even show up on election day, she said.

“We’ve had people to come into the party to register and ask questions about how to register,” Ms. Weathers said.

“But I don’t know if the effort you put forth without any motivation on the (registree’s) part if that really means they will show up or not,” she said. “But if they come to our office and pick up an application, that’s a pretty good sign they are going to show up on election day.”

All those new voters, however, could change results on election day, said one professor of political science. It probably won’t matter in Tennessee, where Sen. John McCain leads Sen. Obama by double digits, polls show.

“But it could make a big difference in local elections or in states where the presidential race is really close,” Dr. Bruce Oppenheimer, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University, said.

Local Democrats plan to call all the folks they registered and remind them to vote, Mr. Bailes said. That will be followed with offers to drive the voter to polling places.

That sort of get-out-the vote effort could be effective, Dr. Oppenheimer said.

“If they can identify voters that are likely to vote for their candidate, then there is a pay-off,” he said.

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