Election Day Thread
 

My prediction: A few days from now, we will still not know who our new president is.

It warmed my heart to hear some talking heads on CNN speculating on Paul Ryan's next career move.

I'm just ready for it to be over.

I think we may know before the polls close on the West Coast/Hawaii and Alaska. If Romney loses Ohio, which seems pretty likely at this point, and if he loses Virginia and Florida, both of which seem more likely than not at this point (though I think Florida is a much closer call), it's over. (That's assuming that both candidates are winning in the states that have been considered "safe" for them or leaning strongly to them.) Even if Romney wins Florida, if he doesn't carry Ohio or Virginia, he pretty much has to win every other swing state, which at this point seems highly unlikely.


Well, it certainly doesn't look like he helped the ticket in Wisconsin. But I assume he's a shoe-in for his congressional seat.

For all of the spotlight on my native Ohio, I think Virginia may be an early "tell." If Obama wins it, game over. If Romney wins it, it'll go a while longer.

As was said upthread, taking what I've seen as pretty reliable lock/and leaning states for each candidate as a base, the president has a lot more ways to get to 270.

Right, but when was the last time a VP candidate lost and went back to a congressional seat? I mean, I know that's what he'll do in the short term, but what else?

There's a chance that all four states voting on marriage equality will get it right today. Honestly, that is more important to me than any candidate for office.

I think it's a possibility for Romney to win the popular vote, but not the electoral vote.

I would love to see that happen, because I think it would make the NPVIC pick up steam in a big way. Most of the states that have approved it are left-leaning, but a Romney loss in the EC might motivate some right-leaning states to pass bills.

I voted 2 weeks ago. I'm ready for all the madness to be over.

Funny, I seem to think it the other way around... :confused:

Possible, though at this point that seems unlikely. Nate Silver, who has a very good track record (we'll see how his track record is after today :D) places the chances of that at 5.3%. (He places the chances of Obama winning the popular election but not the electoral college at 0.6%.)

FWIW, since the popular vote became the norm for how states selected presidential electors (1832 for all states except South Carolina), there have only been three instances where the winner of the electoral college did not also win the popular vote -- 1876, 1888 and 2000.

I voted at 7 a.m. About 50 people were lined up to vote that early. The poll place directors (sorry, I don't know their official name) said it was the most people they had ever seen at that time in the morning for an election.

I love Nate Silver. If he's right, we'll know tonight who won.

I have voted. There was nobody in line when I got there. When I left, there were probably 15 people waiting. The ballot in my county was two pages, both sides and took a long time to complete even though I had brought a list with me of who I was voting for and how I was voting on each proposal. For people who were not as prepared, they could take quite a while reading all the proposals, especially our county proposals which had a lot of legalese.

Nothing to do now but run errands and wait for election coverage tonight! Presidential election days are exciting days to be Americans :)

For those not familiar with Nate Silver, he has been doing statistical analysis of polling for the last two elections (at least). The NY Times has picked up his blog now. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

My wife voted a little after 7:00 and about 250 people had voted before her. (The polls opened at 6:30.)

I voted a few weeks ago. I guess it was the fact that she hadn't voted that kept the ads coming to our TV.