A friend asked me at lunch today to guess the most unexpected state to swing and I called Montana to go blue. Go me.
It looks like Obama will win IN and NC by very slim margins. Some luck here, I guess, but of course these states are nowhere close to mattering. One can hope (hope!) that this will energize the electorates of these new swing states for years to come…
I guess this two-year election saga is over. Hundreds of people started cheering and chanting “Yes we can!”, “U.S.A.!”, and “O-ba-ma!” on the campus right after CNN called the election, and they’re back again, a couple hours later.
I definitely cannot best Julian’s postmortem of the election, so I won’t even try, but I’ll say that I too appreciate and respect McCain more than I did before the election. It’s too bad I missed the concession speech; I’ve heard good things.
There’s a weird sense of finality about the decisive and quick way this election went down: it’s dominated the national discussion for something like two years now, and now we’re looking at a likely drought of competitive elections for four, eight, or some might even say twelve years. There will, of course, be compelling local stories and national movements through congress, but this, in some ways, does feel like the most important election we will face for a very, very long time. I’ve very much enjoyed the newly legitimate and developed online political discourse of the last year — it is now clearly head and shoulders above that on the TV. If one thing’s here to stay from this election cycle, I hope it is it.
You know, at the end of the day, I really like America.
NYT, which has been very conservative in calling races so far, just called the Himes-Shays race for Himes. Shays had been endorsed by the NYT. Crazy.
For the last two weeks or so, I’ve thought Intrade has been overvaluing Obama contracts but they’ve been spot-on so far.
At this point in the night, they have:
Obama trading at 98%+.
NC, NV, CO, MO, VA trading blue. Most significant of these is NV, where Obama is trading at 90%+.
As ridiculous as it is that CNN hasn’t called Texas, they also still haven’t called MS from 8pm!
Julian corrects me on WA being close with some polling data that has Obama +10 or more. OR is a very similar story.
At this point then, it’s impossible. Even a dream scenario only gives McCain 248.
Only one really good questions remains in this race, beside the individual state narratives (FL, IN, NC, VA, CO are ALL good stories):
-when does MSM call the election?
At this point, I’m watching the MN and GA senate races, along with CT ballot amendment one.
Franken (D) seems to be slightly up in MN in early returns but I have no idea how significant that is. I wish CNN were paying attention to that…
The democratic upset in GA is starting to look unlikely with the Republican up about 60%-40% with 50%+ reporting.
A couple smaller things in CT:
Himes (D) is considerably up on incumbent Shays (60%-40%) with 40% reporting. This would oust the last Republican house member in the Northeast (someone told me this-may not be true?).
Amendment 1 is down 60%-40%. It would have called for a questionably defined constitutional convention. This is a good thing.
NM is blue. It turns out the scenario below still works. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.
MN has been called blue. He could alternately need WA. There’s an alternate world out there somewhere where that happens.
CNN calls OH for Obama. At this point McCain needs ALL of FL, VA, IA, MO, NM, CO, NV, MN. All of them.
(Am I allowed a woohoo?)