Young voters are politically awake this year.

Energized by the heated presidential primary, voters from age 18 to their early 20s are heading to the polls in greater numbers than before.

In many other states with primaries this year, young voters turned out at rates three times the usual.

National and state campaigns are reaching out to this new voting bloc in an attempt to woo them. U.S. Senate candidate Kay Hagan's son, Tilden, is hitting college campuses, while Chelsea Clinton has visited North Carolina several times.

Campaigns are posting ads on YouTube and gathering supporters on Facebook. (N&O)

Chelsea Clinton will meet with voters at the Mellow Mushroom on Peace Street in Raleigh this evening.

Clinton will end a day of campaigning in North Carolina with a stop at the popular pizza restaurant on the corner of Peace and Glenwood streets. She is scheduled to be there at 6:15 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is going all out in the final stretch.

The Democratic presidential candidate spent the day in Wake Forest, Gastonia and Mooresville, She's just announced she will return on Monday.

Chelsea will campaign Sunday, while Bill will go on a 15-city swing Sunday and Monday, hitting Marion, Morganton, Lenoir, Newton, Kernersville and Reidsville, and then Elizabeth City, New Bern, Jacksonville, Smithfield, Louisburg, Zebulon, Henderson, Roxboro and Raleigh.

(Maybe that's why Clinton's so worried about high gas prices...) 

This means one of two things: Clinton thinks she has enough of a chance to pull off a win or a really narrow loss here to throw Obama off balance, or she is confident enough that she'll win Indiana that she's decided to spend her ammunition here.

Either way, it's not a good sign for Barack Obama. 

Here's a mostly complete list of Hillary Clinton's surrogates in North Carolina:

Former president Bill Clinton; daughter Chelsea Clinton; Trenton Mayor Doug Palmer; U.S. Reps. Corrine Brown, Edolphus Towns, Sheila Jackson Lee and Lucille Roybal-Allard; former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros; former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe; retired Brigadier Gens. Pat Foote and John Douglass; University of Pennsylvania professor Rev. Marcia Dyson; activist Ann Jordan; former Rock the Vote President Jehmu Greene; Global Summit for Women president Irene Natividad; National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy; longtime friend Betsy Ebeling; actresses Erika Alexander and Heather Tom and actor Sean Astin.

Chelsea Clinton will campaign at Duke University today on behalf of her mother's quest for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Clinton will appear with actor Sean Astin at noon at the Fleishman Commons of the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy at the corner of Towerview and Science Drive.

She is scheduled to tour Duke's Center for Integrative Medicine at 11:30 a.m., in advance of the noon event.

Astin also is scheduled to appear this afternoon at N.C. State University and UNC-Chapel Hill. He will be at Caldwell Lounge at N.C. State at 3 p.m. and the Student Union at UNC at 4:45 p.m.

The Clintons are coming back to North Carolina.

With Pennsylvania voting tomorrow, Hillary Clinton and her two surrogates-in-chief will be turning their attention southward.

Former president Bill Clinton will make his fifth campaign trip, attending "Solutions for America" events in Hillsborough, Burlington, Asheboro, Lexington and Statesville. All events will be free and open to the public, and no tickets will be required.

Chelsea Clinton will be in North Carolina Tuesday and Hillary Clinton will attend a Club 44 rally at Charlotte's City Center on Monday, April 28.  

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton will hold a high-dollar fundraiser in Greensboro.

The Democratic presidential candidate and her daughter will be at the Carolina Theatre at noon Monday for an event.

Tickets range from $25 for students and $50 for general seating to $2,300 for "benefactors."

The event is being billed as "Hillary Live!"

More information is available on Clinton's Web site here. 

The campaign held a high-dollar fundraiser featuring Bill Clinton in December at the Brier Creek Country Club in Raleigh, though there were no cheaper tickets available to that event.

Remember that set piece that Chelsea Clinton told last week?

During her visits to the Young Democrats convention, N.C. State and Peace College, the former first daughter told a moving story of a pregnant Ohio woman who died because the hospital would not admit her.

As it turns out, Hillary Clinton has told the same story on the campaign trail. And the hospital in question — O'Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio — has told the New York Times it is not accurate.

"We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story," hospital CEO Rick Castrop told the paper. He said the woman was not denied care.

The Times' recounting of Hillary's version of the anecdote sounds almost word-for-word the same as Chelsea's.

Earlier: Chelsea woos voters with hospital story. 

Students at a forum at UNC-Chapel Hill today said Chelsea Clinton seemed professional, but needed more enthusiasm and excitement.

"I was almost bored by her facial expressions," said Hailey Loftis, a history and studio art major from Greensboro.

But Loftis and fellow sophomore Elizabeth Beene said the question-and-answer session in the Student Union only reinforced their support of Hillary Clinton because of the way Chelsea addressed questions on education and health care.

Beene, a music education major, said Chelsea served as a "liaison between her family and the younger population."

Freshman Arielle Reid, a psychology major from Charlotte, said she was leaning toward Obama.

"She leveled the playing field," Reid said of Chelsea Clinton. "I need to do more research."