If you haven't, get the heck out there and vote, and don't get bandwagoned. Remember, if everyone who had wanted Fred Thompson, but didn't think he could win, had voted for him in the primaries, he probably would have won.
[Update mid morning]
I already said this earlier, but don't pay too much attention to exit polls. They tend to skew Democrat, and they were pretty far off in 2004 (which is why some moonbats thought that Kerry must have won Ohio--they thought that the exit polls were right, and the actual vote tally was wrong).
[Update at 9:25 PM EST]
Ohio seems to be lost to McCain. I'd say that's the end of the game.
The battle now is to keep the ability to filibuster the Senate.
The nation has gone nuts.
[Note: this post will be at the top until polls close in Hawaii, so scroll down for any new stuff today]
The exit polls won't be worth a bucket of spit this year because of the Bradley effect.
You're completely correct that there is a bandwagon effect, and that exit polls are basically snake oil.
Nonetheless, Obama will almost certainly beat McCain by more than Bush beat Kerry. This will happen even though Bush led Kerry in the polls for two weeks longer than Obama led McCain in the polls. It will happen even though (or even partly because) there has been a massive expansion of early voting. In fact, since the campaigns have access to early voter rolls, and since they can guess from their databases what most of them decided, McCain might well already know that he will lose.
Oh, one other thing.
Ignore Jim Harris (I know that this goes without saying for long-time readers here).
It will happen even though (or even partly because) there has been a massive expansion of early voting FRAUD.
There Jim, fixed it for you.
Bill, I agree that fraud is always a serious question in any presidential election. Since you can always come up with a new theory of fraud, it's impossible to fully prove that any election wasn't stolen.
If you mean ACORN specifically, the New York Times had an interesting report on that. ACORN claims that they registered 1.3 million voters, but their claim is wrong. One third of ACORN's registrations were rejected, one third were only changes of address and similar for people who were already registered to vote, and only one third were new registrations. So actually ACORN only registered 400,000 voters.
It is of course a leap to then say that all 400,000 of these registrations are fraudulent, or that all of them will vote for Obama. Nonetheless, Obama will almost certainly outperform what Bush did in 2004 by more than 400,000 votes.
I'm beavering away trying to get my day's work out of the way before lunch time, then walk the dog, through my ceremonial tea bag into the bay and off to the pub with some other disenfranchised tax paying ex-pats to watch the results come in.
Exit polls don't really matter, if McCain doesn't flip PA, which really really looks unlikely unless the actual polls are amazingly wrong, then he's pretty much without a change. Unless ALL the polls are completely wrong.
Coming from a country where it's never taken me more than 10 minutes to cast a vote (including parking), I'm astounded at the wait times you guys have.
Whoa, that's weird. I just got back from the polls, and every one of the 200 McCain/Palin voters was a fine, tall, prosperous-looking specimen of a handsome man or drop-dead gorgeous woman, while the only Obama/Biden voter was a drooling cretin of unknown sex covered in gang tats and flies.
Must be some weird coincidence. I'm sure there's more than one Obama voter in my neighborhood.
Exit polls don't really matter, if McCain doesn't flip PA
Actually, the most likely ways for McCain to win the election don't include Pennsylvania as of this morning.
It's not clear why he pinned his hopes against that one rock, when some of the other hard places are a little softer.
However, it is true that Obama will almost certainly win Pennsylvania and Virginia and he will probably win Ohio too. After that, yeah, exit polls will have nothing to do with it.
I should also have said re ACORN that it is a triple leap, first to say that all 400,000 of its registrations are fraudulent, then to equate phantom registrations with fraudulent votes, and then to suppose that all of it goes to Obama. Again, even that triple leap won't explain reality, because it's just 400,000 registrations.
Jim,
Even if we assume the NYT it totally accurate here, how does your brain allow you to recognize that ACORN tried to register 1.3 Million voters, and that 2/3rds of them were shown to be "incorrectly registered", but you don't recognize a fraud on the American people?
Under the law, "attempted" murder is a crime. Does attempted fraud have no meaning to you?
How many of those 400,000 that did get registered were actually fraudulent? We can't know, but given ACORN's track record I bet the true number is above any reasonable rate of error. Well above.
Jim,
Given his resource spread and early votes without PA I just don't see the path at the moment. There might be one but Chuck Todd on MSNBC was struggling yesterday with it.
Brock,
The simple system is to come up with a better and more sane way of registering voters. Reliance on private organisations is always going to have these kinds of results, although, it seems unlikely that Mr M Mouse and Mr D Duck will actually be turning up to vote.
The UK system: you fill in a form each year that your local council sends to your house where you declaire that you are eligable to vote - lying is a criminal offense.
The local election office send out a Voter ID card about 2 weeks before an election and you take this with a piece of ID to the polling station.
The polling stations are all manual and use paper and pencils, you fill in the ballots and post them in a box.
That night a bunch of volenteers (usually bank and post office staff) count the votes in a large public space with representatives off the Returning Officer (who runs the election) and the parties/candidates in the room.
It's a little slow but we get through about 20 Million votes in a single night.
Oh, we also keep the polling stations open until 10pm, something that would seem to be a good idea for you guys.
Well, no, M Mouse and D Duck won't be showing up to vote. But John Smith, Richard Roe, and Mary Doe certainly could turn up.
Really, the whole "well, obviously fraudulently-registered names won't turn up to vote" argument is just idiotically stupid on its face. Someone with intent to commit vote fraud *won't register with an unlikely name.* How clear does that have to be?
Daveon wrote:
"country where it's never taken me more than 10 minutes to cast a vote (including parking)"
Hmmm, just got back from lunch. Took me about 10 minutes to vote. I guess things do occasionally work as well in the U.S. as in Europe.
how does your brain allow you to recognize that ACORN tried to register 1.3 Million voters, and that 2/3rds of them were shown to be "incorrectly registered"
Brock, those aren't the numbers or the facts. 1/3 were accepted as re-registrations, things like changes of address, and only 1/3 of the registrations were rejected. If a registration is rejected, it isn't necessarily "shown" to be anything. Maybe some of these rejected registrations were deliberate fabrications, but there has been no "showing" of that sort.
but you don't recognize a fraud on the American people?
Sure, I recognize fraud and fraud is wrong. People who commit fraud should be prosecuted. The question is, what kind of fraud? For instance, Clifford Irving's hoax biography of Howard Hughes was a fraud against the American people, but it had nothing to do with the 1972 election. (Even though Irving imagined that it did.)
In this case, we are talking about people who defrauded ACORN with registrations that can't by themselves lead to actual votes. That's why ACORN itself flagged most of these cases. Some corrupt election officials would have to stuff ballots with these phantom registrations. Even if hypothetically that happened somewhere, it would not explain Obama's near-certain large victory over McCain, because a molehill does not explain a mountain.
Again, yes bogus registration is bad, yes it's a crime, no I don't condone it. But if you need an ACORN theory to explain why you have a liberal black president, no it won't be the explanation, not by a mile.
About those polls being off...in a handful of states that may be in part a result of the Limbaugh Effect. Many polls, particularly those based on registered (as opposed to likely) voters, are adjusted for the GOP/Dem ratio. In the latter primary states the Dem column is skewed due to the crossover voting brought about by Operation Chaos.
Then there's the ACORN Effect. Its Potemkin voter registration artificially inflates the Democratic column, and thus skews the registered-voters polls. Rig the election by rigging the polls. The polls become a de facto Tokyo Rose, psych warfare to depress Republican turnout.
but we get through about 20 Million votes in a single night.
Christ, Daveon, I hope you realize there are more voters than that just in California.
Then there's the ACORN Effect. Its Potemkin voter registration artificially inflates the Democratic column, and thus skews the registered-voters polls.
By at most a third of a percent, since they only registered 400,000 new voters. But Obama is up by 7.6 percent in the RCP average. Again, mountain, molehill.
But John Smith, Richard Roe, and Mary Doe certainly could turn up.
And this will happen a hundred thousand times, without any DA getting wind of it? It's true that the movie "Live and Let Die" had a vast, clandestine black mafia, and I actually liked this movie even though it was rather silly, but it is not reality.
To get back to reality, Obama will almost certainly surge past what Bush achieved in 2004, by more than a million votes.
Jim,
I'll just settle for the indictments on contribution fraud for the whole Obama campaign management team. What did Obama know and when did he know it? That's a question the MSM will never ask.
I mention that because those illegal contributions help fund polling observers and get out the vote teams.
Christ, Daveon, I hope you realize there are more voters than that just in California.
Yeah, it's your most populous state with a population similar to the UK. I read that you'll have about 130 million votes to count, but that doesn't really matter because vote counting scales reasonably easily on a local and state basis, assuming CA works like the UK, which it could.
Hell, count the president one day, and do the local stuff the next. But for crying out loud have a paper trail and stop using these machines.
Really, the whole "well, obviously fraudulently-registered names won't turn up to vote" argument is just idiotically stupid on its face. Someone with intent to commit vote fraud *won't register with an unlikely name.* How clear does that have to be?
It's clear.
It's also clear that Acorn paid a bunch of numbskulls on a peice work basis to fill in forms which they did really badly to make money. Do I believe for an instant that it was part of an organised atempt to get people to vote illegally in large numbers?
Nope, not in an instant.
Do I think it will materially change the outcome of this election?
Nope.
Hmmmmm.
@ Rand
It would've helped had Thompson actually acted like he wanted to win.
IMO I frankly thought he was a stalking horse for McCain. By sucking up all the conservative oxygen and holding out the bare promise of running he effectively neutered every other conservative candidate.
Which let McCain, his friend, win the nomination.
So I generally discount what Thompson has to say. Whether or not he was a stalking horse for McCain is irrelevant. What is relevant is that he ran a desultory campaign not worth the name and he wasted everyone's time and money.
I'll just settle for the indictments on contribution fraud for the whole Obama campaign management team.
This is why I love reading this site.
My tea has been thrown, off to the pub soon to watch the fun.
but that doesn't really matter because vote counting scales reasonably easily on a local and state basis,
I think actually the evidence suggests you're wrong about that. The difficulty is that you need a taller and taller management heirarchy in the poll-counting and election-monitoring system.
That is, suppose for every 1000 voters you need x vote counters. Then, for every 10 vote-counters you need a vote-counter manager, and for every 10 vote-counter managers you need a super-manager, and so forth. If you have a smaller number of voters you get to stop at a lower number of layers of management heirarchy. So the size of the organization needed scales as a power greater than 1 of the number of voters.
You see a similar problem in firms, right? Smaller firms have very light management structure, while larger firms require heavier and heavier management superstructures. I'm quite sure IBM spends a much bigger percentage of its income on pure management than my small company, because management does not scale linearly with number of employees, alas.
Carl, I don't think it needs to be a hierarchy like that. It should be pretty flat.
The UK system sub-divides the whole country into blocks of about 100,000 people - these are all counted in one place under one team. They usually have about 30-40 people counting with 1 person in charge per area.
There's no level above that in the UK, but all you'd need is a single state wide reporting group.
Some of the more rural areas in the UK declare extremely late because it can take hours to get the votes to the count. Some wait until the next day because they have to come in by boat.
This only works if you're running a First Past the Post system like the UK and US, it goes completely out of the windows if you're running a Single Transferable Vote system like most of Europe. Then you need 2-3 days to work out who won. But a 2 horse race should be easy.
Hmmmmm.
@ Daveon
"It's also clear that Acorn paid a bunch of numbskulls on a peice work basis to fill in forms which they did really badly to make money. Do I believe for an instant that it was part of an organised atempt to get people to vote illegally in large numbers?"
Your problem is that ACORN has implemented a faulty system for voter registration in a multitude of states for many years now.
It beggars belief that a -criminal- systemic failure in an organization that isn't corrected over the course of many years -is not- a deliberate act.
Once is happenstance
Twice is coincidence
Three times is enemy action
It beggars belief that a -criminal- systemic failure in an organization that isn't corrected over the course of many years -is not- a deliberate act.
Yes, it does beggar belief.
I'd re-write that it beggars belief that a systemic failure in voter registration across the US has not been corrected over years is not a deliberate act.
The very circumstances that allow ACORN to do something this dumb should never have arisen.
"The very circumstances that allow ACORN to do something this dumb should never have arisen."
Every time attempts are made to correct this, cries of racism and intimidation flood the airwaves and newspapers.
Did you find my comment about fraud funny? This involves hundreds of millions of dollars. What they did was a deliberate act to encourage fraud. Their ludicrous claim that they were assiduously checking on the "back end" is full of logical holes you could drive a Saturn V through.
The Michelle Obama "Whitey Tape".
Where is it? Where is the frequent poster here who smugly insisted we'd see/hear it before the election. Hilarious moonbatery.
I win.
Did you find my comment about fraud funny?
Yes.
This involves hundreds of millions of dollars.
Gosh. Really? [*]
[*] - Good luck proving it.
I'm still skeptical that Obama will win. If he does, I will believe that we are truly a post racial country. Simply because I think there are enough factors that say the country is very uncomfortable with where we are at right now, so if that discomfort is much greater than the discomfort of having a Black guy as President, Obama should win.
That said, yes, where is the Whitey tape? Mike Puckett, where are you?
That said, yes, where is the Whitey tape?
Purchased by Soros for $20M.
Escrow agreement says it can't be public before Nov 4th or no $.
Dave,
Nice of you to have such a cavalier attitude about credit card fraud from a presidential campaign. And yes, there are documented examples on the record. One other thing, put that sarcasm where the sun don't shine.
It will be exciting if Obama bags Indiana. (But it is by no means a sure thing.) It would be solid evidence that he can not only win, but win big.
As for the "whitey" tape, it was all along a euphemism for dividing the American people into us, white people, versus them, black people. And for some people that was also the point of wild fantasies of a massive Bradley effect.
wont' Say wrote: "That said, yes, where is the Whitey tape?
Purchased by Soros for $20M.
Escrow agreement says it can't be public before Nov 4th or no $."
Freakin hilarious! A classis moving the goalposts lame attempt, only to be completely refuted AGAIN after Nov 4th. What an exercize in uncritical wishfull thinking and projection.
And I'm no Obammer fan. Don't like socialism.
I tried to put "tinfoil hat" begin and end blocks around the comment, but the system thought they were HTML tags.
and deleted them
;-)
Hmmmm.
@ Daveon
"I'd re-write that it beggars belief that a systemic failure in voter registration across the US has not been corrected over years is not a deliberate act."
Well if you know anything about American politics you'd know that Republicans have been trying to repair this sad state of affairs for the past 20+ years now.
"The very circumstances that allow ACORN to do something this dumb should never have arisen."
And if you include the fact that federal taxpayers are the ones actually paying for it, then you'd realize just how crazy it is. But ACORN, and other similar organizations, are the darlings of Democrats and RINOs so it's become nearly impossible to cut them off.
Negative Attacks don't work.
Say Hi to President Obama.
Ahem.
President Barack Hussein Obama.
There. I feel better already.
My condolences to Obama and his family for the loss of his grandmother. But congratulations for the winning the election!
The icing on the cake, in my view, is that Obama buried the Confederate flag in Virginia, and probably in Florida too; and he may have blotted the memory of the Klan in Indiana. The "tap dances like Sammy Davis Junior" faction was outvoted. At least in these states, Lincoln can rest in peace today.
"Nonetheless, Obama will almost certainly beat McCain by more than Bush beat Kerry."
Wow. Jim Harris was right.
Just thought I would humor Jim with a temporary name change.
Color me surprised at the results. Is this a great country or what?
Is this a great country or what?
Yes. That's why it's OK that Obama won.
Bill - "fraud" or illegal donations? From what I've read so far, illegal contributions will be rejected. Not that it really makes any difference.
As for the sarcasm. I'm just getting started :)
This is going to be an entertaining 4 years. My primary concern is while, in my opinion, he was a better choice than McCain - he's going to be another Tony Blair.