Tuesday, November 04, 2008

 

Ohio for Obama, It's Over

If one assumes that Obama will win California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii, and their 77 electoral votes, and add them to the 175 Obama already has, we are within 18 EVs of electing Barack Obama the 44th President of the United States.

Polls don't close on the West coast until 11:00 pm.

Ohio has just been called for Barack Obama. IT IS OVER!!!!

Party Time!

 

Obama within 100 EVs. Udall 4th Dem Senate Pick-up

Tom Udall defeats Steve Pierce in New Mexico, another pick-up for the Democrats.

A slew of states were just called for Obama, including New York, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Rhode Island. Georgia went for McCain, as did Oklahoma and Kansas. Obama is showing well in Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Indiana. Most of these states are going to eventually go to Obama. There's likely a good deal of vote flipping going on just to try to not make it look like as large a slaughter as it really is.

Arizona, McCain's home state, too close to call. Always a bad sign when you can't defend your home state.

Clean sweep for Obama in the Northeast and upper Midwest.

Obama 174, McCain 76.

ABC just called Kentucky for Mitch McConnell, but the margin was razor thin.

 

Hagan Ousts Liz Dole in NC

Another Republican Senate seat goes down. Hagan whips Dole in NC. Sununu (R) is also out in New Hampshire, beaten by Jeanne Shaheen on her second try.

This is looking more and more like an Obama avalanche. There's almost no doubt about it. They're calling for more than 1/2 million people in Grant's Park in Chicago where Barack Obama is expected to accept the Presidency later tonight.

New York closes within 10 minutes. Another 31 electoral votes for Obama, who only needs one more swing state to call it a night because he has the West coast (California, Oregon and Washington) in the bag.

McCain is facing a real uphill climb. It really looks like it's over. I'm on my fifth beer. The celebrations will begin shortly as it gets closer and closer to reality.

I can hardly believe that the eight year nightmare is almost over.

 

Pennsylvania Goes for Obama

All networks confirming the Keystone State and its 21 electoral votes belong to Barack Obama. This is great news for Obama, but it brings Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada later. The networks want to keep us glued in until at least 10:00.

No raw numbers, still, anywhere. Very strange.

All the Northeastern states are falling in line for Obama. He'll probably maintain the lead from here on out.

 

The Anxiety Level is Rising Fast

Strange. At 7:20, PBS has Obama ahead 50-49, while ABC has McCain winning by the same percentage.

Polls in Georgia, Vermont, Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia, South Carolina and most Florida are already closed.

No raw numbers available just yet from most of the states.

Warner wins in Virginia. Daniels (R) takes Governorship in Indiana.

This is too close. These numbers aren't yet making any sense. McCain is leading nationally, but who knows from where they're getting their figures. Ohio, West Virginia and North Carolina closing at 7:30. We need to start getting some numbers.

 

Exit Poll Trends via ABC

ABC just released preliminary battleground state exit polling data. Stunningly, the economy was the #1 issue for 60% of voters. The War in Iraq was a distant second at 11%. Charlie Gibson said he had never seen such a dominant issue.

74% espressed dissatisfaction with president Bush.

If these trends holds up, it's going to be a rout for Democrats.

Which network has the best coverage? So far, I'm looking at ABC.

 

Four Key Senate Races

There are 35 Senate races this election year and a good number of them are close. There may also be some sizable unexpected outcomes, especially if Obama wins a number of the early swing states, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio and Virginia key among them.

The races that are worth watching are, with incumbents listed first:

Minnesota: Norm Coleman (R) vs. Al Franken (D)
North Carolina: Elizabeth Dole (R) vs. Kay Hagan (D)
Kentucky: Mitch McConnell (R) vs. Bruce Lunsford (D)
Alaska: Ted Stevens (R) vs. Mark Begich (D)

Hagan has been well ahead in the polls in NC right through to the election. Franken is in a virtual dead heat. There's a third candidate taking votes from both in Minnesota. Stevens was convicted of taking gifts from constituents in return for legislative favors and should go down, or will Alaskans show their maverick tendency and return a convicted felon to Congress? McConnell is nothing less than the Republican leader in the Senate. His defeat would be huge. Even a close call would send an enormous message.

Network news is beginning. Let's see what the suits have to say.

 

Randomly Towards a Decision

Just posting some ideas...

Will we get this one right? Or will be be subjected to the whims and wishes of a hidden power elite? Did enough people go out and cast votes in such an overwhelming majority that any egregious vote-fixing would be easily spotted? Will the majority be large enough to discourage the manipulators completely?

Probably not. There is sure to be a large degree of vote switching within the maze of computer networks and IT specialists across the nation. The sizable hope is that turnout exceeded even the greatest expectations.

Considering that there's still litigation in motion over the 2004 election, maybe expecting that there won't be tampering turns out to be a defective concept. There's always hope for a free and fair election. A certain large percentage of Americans will never stop trying to get elections to be fairly run, honestly administrated and completely non-partisan. It seems such a long shot.

Exit polling used to "call" states and races is once again being handled by the usual gang: Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool, a consortium of the networks and The Associated Press. Well, in a nation that also sports the BCS for picking a college football champion, what can we expect?

 

No Early Exit Polls

Exit polls and other early indicators are under tight security, especially since the 2004 election showed the early exit polls favoring Kerry before a sudden shift later in the evening by George W. Bush erased all of that. In the end, exit polls were eventually "adjusted" to match the figures on election web sites. No big deal there. We're just talking about some run-of-the-mill organizations like CNN, MSNBC, FOX and ABC.

Obviously, our glorious captains of industry and mind-controlling media moguls don't want little details like actual vote counts muddying the waters about which candidate is actually chosen. The small matter of who did the choosing need not be shared with the actual electorate.

For those reasons, in addition to the avalanche of litigation and reporting on questionable and, to a large degree, criminal, activity that took place in 2004, and after the debacle of 2000, the shapers of the universe are at odds with the general public. It's an unhealthy relationship in which the public at first mistrusts the government, and then mistrusts the people supposed to expose the misdeeds of government, project and protect the populace, the media.

Worse than promoting a stalemate, bad public-media relations foments more than just plain anger, it proceeds to survival instinctiveness and gets nasty on both sides, but especially in the public sphere, if only because there are so many individuals whose actions cannot be predicted or aganst which much of a defense can be erected.

So, here we are with no fireworks. Well, maybe it for the best that there are no early exit polls today. There has been enough incidental and anecdotal reporting already, via early voting polling, and it all points to the same thing - a Democratic landslide with Obama winning as many as 340 electoral votes at the top of the ticket.

The networks aren't going to call a race, or a state, until they're darned sure of what's out there. Quite a few stories are circulating on the consition of no early exit poll releases, The Chicago Tribune has a good story.

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Live Blogging: Stocks UP, Gold UP, Oil UP

Here's a quick and dirty look at what happened on Wall Street today. Some odd trading brought stocks and commodities higher as Americans went to the polls. Check out our commentary at Money Daily.

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Today is the Day!!

Live Blogging to Begin at 5:00 pm ET.

Well, I voted at 10:00 this morning, and was planning to start blogging while simultaneously hitting the bong and boilermakers around 1:00, but a nefarious click attack on my home site set back my plans by a couple of hours.

Naturally, I'm blaming Republicans for this, since they cannot win elections legally nor garner enough traffic to make a living from advertising, they resort to harming those who can and do. Reports of vote theft, flipping and disenfranchisement have been abundant the past few days, and most of us are gripping right about now, especially since Lion John (McCain) has been on the campaign trail insisting that he's going to win.

I have a some web housekeeping to attend to before the festivities can really get underway here, but in the meantime, readers can regale themselves with some of the work I did yesterday on my woefully incomplete but highly entertaining Election Guide. Click on the graphic below and you'll magically jump into a new window of wonder.

I'll be back shortly. Promise.

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