Open Thread.
Here’s my opening guess. Romney takes Florida and has an 75% probability of taking OH and 70% winning of NH. IA is close, maybe advantage Obama. As for the rest of the swing states, the crystal ball doesn’t show.
Andrew Sullivan warns: beware the exit polls. The Sydney Morning Herald, whose reader poll shows 84% of the believe Obama will win, has its Washington correspondent reporting the true results may take ‘weeks’ to tabulate. The article goes on to say that although polls showed Romney ahead they also revealed Obama was surging.
One emerging narrative is the idea that Romney was nosed out at the finish line by Obama. This sets the stage for recounts, lawsuits and other types of complaints.
This has become more urgent since a Pennsylvania electronic voting machine has been taken out of service after being captured on video changing a vote for President Obama into one for Mitt Romney, NBC News has confirmed. Republicans have also said machines have turned Romney votes into Obama ones.
Exit polls are so dangerous that they are going to be examined in a “quarantine room”.
At 11 a.m. today, representatives from the consortium of news organizations that sponsor the National Election Pool will enter a “quarantine room,” where they’ll look at data gathered via exit polls, Michael Calderone reports….
The news orgs represented — ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and the AP — can report general trends but cannot report the results of exit polls until the polls close. Anne Cronin at Politico has made a handy map showing the times at which the individual states’ polls close.
Ezra Klein and Ariana Huffington warn against getting fooled by exit polls. Chris Matthew says ‘the haters have all voted. It is the lovers that do not vote’.
We are permitted to know this from the quarantined exit polls. “WASHINGTON – Preliminary results of an exit poll conducted for The Associated Press show that the presidential election hinges once again on the economy … Just a quarter of those surveyed in the exit poll say they are better off than four years ago.” Drudge adds without details: “EXITS: Obama has 190 electoral votes and Romney has 191 locked… ”
R: NC, FL
O: OH, NH, PA, MI, NV
TOSS UP: VA, CO, IA
I think I got Florida right. I predicted NH will go Romney, but with less confidence. However, the exits notwithstanding I’ve no reason to change the prediction about NH. Rich Lowry has Republican data for CO, FL, NH, NV, PA, OH, VA and WI. Anecdotal but nothing definite.
Results are now coming in at Real Clear Politics.
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
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