With the Democratic and Republican National Conventions still months away, student groups for the respective parties are biding their time, waiting until the November election draws nearer to kick off major campaign activities.

Hilary Clinton’s 10 percent lead in Pennsylvania’s primary on Tuesday showed that the Democratic primary race may be far from over. Meanwhile, Republicans nationwide have been trying to build support for McCain since he clinched the party nomination in February. But here at Stanford, student political groups on both sides seem to be waiting for the primary season to end for real mobilization to begin.

Admittedly, neither the Stanford Democrats nor the Stanford College Republicans has been very active since the California Primary, when Stanford students voted in record numbers.

“We are setting up infrastructure [for the general election],” said Ashwin Mudaliar ‘09, the political director of the Stanford Democrats.

He noted that the success of voter registration and student mobilization in the primary has set a good precedent for the general election.

Debashish Bakshi ‘08, another active member of Stanford Democrats and President of Students for Obama, echoed this sentiment.

“I imagine campus mobilization in the fall general election will look a lot like our mobilization for the Feb. 5 primary,” Bakshi said.

Bakshi observed that the Obama campaign already appealed to a number of independent voters and Republicans on campus. He said that in the event of an Obama nomination, the message of the campaign will not be much different.

“Stanford students are, however, still involved in the campaign,” Bakshi said. “This weekend a number of volunteers from Stanford [flew] out to Pennsylvania to work on the Obama campaign.”

Republican organizers, on the other hand, found it hard to stir up the same kind of sentiment among the predominantly liberal student body.

Irina Oberman ‘09, vice president of Stanford College Republicans, attributed the lack of active political participation from the Republican side to “the politically correct atmosphere here, which tends to be less divisive than, say, at Berkeley where conservatives band together due to a real sense of persecution.”

The College Republicans, however, have remained active by hosting speaker events and meeting with Republican Party officials throughout the year.

Looking ahead to the general election, Oberman said she believed McCain can unite the party despite his divergence from the conventional conservative stance on numerous issues.

“He definitely is at odds with many groups within the party on many issues,” Oberman said, “but many people are focusing on McCain’s electability and his attraction for independent as one of his major assets.”

Mudaliar was equally optimistic about post-primary party unity despite the drawn-out nomination process.

“The press is taken off John McCain, and the press is put on Clinton and Obama, so they get more exposure,” he said. “And exposure is usually a very good thing.”

Bakshi also did not see an obstacle in uniting the party after the primary.

“While I do not think it would be possible for the two campaigns to merge into the same ticket,” he said, “we are all Democrats who believe that a McCain presidency would take the country in the wrong direction — both domestically and globally.”

When asked about the tension between the College Republicans and Democrats, both sides acknowledge the near non-existence of antagonism.

“We have a very cordial working relationship with the Republicans,” Mudaliar said.

The College Republicans and Stanford Democrats jointly host an Internship Fair in the fall to get students more involved in the political process of an election. Mudaliar heaped praise on both groups in one respect — they keep students politically active.