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According to MSNBC, Romney is ahead 19 electoral votes to Obama's three, and is up by 63% to 35% in the popular vote.

It's way early, though, and a lot seems projected and not certain, but I'm surprised at this.

Relapse wrote:
It's way early, though, and a lot seems projected and not certain, but I'm surprised at this.

Try waiting to be surprised until after more than 0.0001% of the vote has been counted. Those numbers are meaningless right now, since they're just the result of a republican district/state or two being officially called earlier than a democrat district/state. In 15 minutes it could easily swing back to a decisive Obama "victory" when an inevitable Obama state is officially called.

 Peregrine wrote:

Relapse wrote:
It's way early, though, and a lot seems projected and not certain, but I'm surprised at this.

Try waiting to be surprised until after more than 0.0001% of the vote has been counted. Those numbers are meaningless right now, since they're just the result of a republican district/state or two being officially called earlier than a democrat district/state. In 15 minutes it could easily swing back to a decisive Obama "victory" when an inevitable Obama state is officially called.

No need to get your panties twisted. I did say it was way early.

Relapse wrote:
No need to get your panties twisted. I did say it was way early.

So what's the point in making a thread about it this early? I mean, all you've said was "hey guys someone called a Romney state 15 minutes before they called an Obama state, omg what a surprise!!!!". There's just nothing to discuss at this point.

If you guys want to watch it in realtime, it looks like FNC has a pretty good realtime dashboard here:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2012-election-results

NBC and CNN have similar, but less excellent, versions of the same. I found this was the case in 2010 and 2008 as well. What Fox lacks in reporting they make up for in coding.

 Ouze wrote:
If you guys want to watch it in realtime, it looks like FNC has a pretty good realtime dashboard here:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2012-election-results

NBC and CNN have similar, but less excellent, versions of the same. I found this was the case in 2010 and 2008 as well. What Fox lacks in reporting they make up for in coding.

Thanks for the information.

 Peregrine wrote:

Relapse wrote:
It's way early, though, and a lot seems projected and not certain, but I'm surprised at this.

Try waiting to be surprised until after more than 0.0001% of the vote has been counted. Those numbers are meaningless right now, since they're just the result of a republican district/state or two being officially called earlier than a democrat district/state. In 15 minutes it could easily swing back to a decisive Obama "victory" when an inevitable Obama state is officially called.

Yup, expect the numbers to fluctuate wildly for the next hour plus...

Are any of the state polls even closed yet?

Six states should be closed now...0730

No, they're doing projections based off, like, 5% of the vote.


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Which 6? 730 seems a little early, doesn't it?

I've been watching politico.com, which says 3:8, not 3:19... then again, Fox has proven its objectivity often

The LA Times says the same.
That is a total of.....11 out of 270 votes.
Lets wait until midnight on the west coast before we call it.

Now i'm tabbing between the FNC one and the Politico one. I'm not sure which I like better.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
The LA Times says the same.
That is a total of.....11 out of 270 votes.
Lets wait until midnight on the west coast before we call it.

It could be a wild ride tonight for sure.

So far it's Romney's 33 electoral votes to Obama's 3 projected, but the popular vote is extremely close. Things are really going to be flipping and turning like crazy in a couple more hours.

Why aren't they calling Florida for Obama? They felt pretty comfortable calling VT at 3%, SC at 2%, WV at 1%... but Florida has 36% reported, the most of any state currently, and it's all hey, what's the rush?

Maybe there's a rationale I don't understand.

I think Florida may depend on the panhandle. Also often it depends on population centers.

The pan handle is in the central time zone and I belive the polls close an hour later there. It's a solidly republican zone so while Obama is up for now, it's too late.

 Ouze wrote:
Why aren't they calling Florida for Obama? They felt pretty comfortable calling VT at 3%, SC at 2%, WV at 1%... but Florida has 36% reported, the most of any state currently, and it's all hey, what's the rush?

Maybe there's a rationale I don't understand.

Probably because those states are predictable, and they're willing to call a predictable state as soon as the votes start coming in and confirm that nothing unusual has happened (and the polls close so they're allowed to make the call). Florida, as a contested swing state, needs a higher percentage before they can comfortably say it's gone one way or another.

As someone with an avid interest in international politics (and for whom no foreign country's election is more important than that of the US - it affects us all) I've found the press coverage (especially concerning the BBC) for this election to be pretty intriguing, but not specifically for the way that it seems to have become more far reaching than ever before. Specifically because most of the polling/analysis opinion carried out prior to the election, and during the start of it, has Obama down as the victor. Not by the margin that we saw in 2008, but certainly not the neck & neck race to the line that the BBC in particular over here is expounding. So why the lack of proper reporting and accurate commentary? It's like they too have been drawn into the massive, overblown theatre of the whole event; We know the movie is going to end with Bruce Willis blowing some dodgy-sounding European criminal's head off, yet we still grip our seats and fear for him as he scrapes through by the width of his white vest (not to draw analogies to any particular 'character' in this election).

So, analyses from multiple sources (who have got every other election right, going back years) are saying it's Obama in 2012. Are they suddenly going to all be wrong? Is it some conspiracy, with Obama's nephew the one who owns the polling machine software company in Ohio?

Or is it just the BBC, who I've heard are a commonly watched channel for anyone in the US so sick of news stations falling on one side or the other, are afraid of alienating any of their viewership ?

Anyway I've had enough of it for now - sadly there is no longer the opportunity for Gore Vidal to be interviewed and come out with some witty yet often rude retorts to the news presenters (a good reason to stay up and watch previous elections!), so I'm off to bed and wait to see the aftermath in the morning!

 Peregrine wrote:
Probably because those states are predictable, and they're willing to call a predictable state as soon as the votes start coming in and confirm that nothing unusual has happened (and the polls close so they're allowed to make the call). Florida, as a contested swing state, needs a higher percentage before they can comfortably say it's gone one way or another.

That sounds reasonable, sure.

Also, it looks like Obama is, so far, winning Ohio - that's probably it there, right?

 Pacific wrote:
So why the lack of proper reporting and accurate commentary?

Because reporting accurately doesn't generate interest. If the headline week after week was "Obama still likely to win, Romney still the worst candidate ever" attention drops, and advertising income goes with it. On the other hand reporting it as "CLOSEST RACE EVER KEEP WATCHING OUR NEWS SO YOU DON'T MISS ANYTHING" is more likely to keep everyone's attention, and then you add in the effect of 24/7 news making it mandatory to have a "close race" just so the 24/7 news shows have something to talk about.

Of course in a self-fulfilling prophecy this probably resulted in the election being a lot closer than it should have been, since everyone was afraid to go after Romney as harshly as he deserved and risk making it obvious that the show was over. As a result Romney looks like less of a joke and gains a false sense of legitimacy and probably a lot of votes he wouldn't have had in a world with honest reporting.


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 Ouze wrote:
Also, it looks like Obama is, so far, winning Ohio - that's probably it there, right?

Well, that depends on what order the results arrive in. If the Obama-leaning districts simply happened to count their votes faster than the Romney-leaning districts then it's too early to call it since the current total isn't a representative sample. On the other hand, if the districts that counted their votes fastest are a representative sample then it's a lot more likely to be an accurate prediction of the final result.

For example, google tells me that SC has been called for Romney even though Obama is "winning" the state right now, which just means that the token Obama-leaning districts in a Romney-dominated state happened to count and report their votes a bit faster and dominate the first 1% of the count, but once the other 99% are counted that will no longer be the case.

Ouze wrote:Why aren't they calling Florida for Obama? They felt pretty comfortable calling VT at 3%, SC at 2%, WV at 1%... but Florida has 36% reported, the most of any state currently, and it's all hey, what's the rush?

Maybe there's a rationale I don't understand.

Because if Florida gets called for Obama, then it's game over, goodnight, no more ratings.

Maybe they can't release the numbers due to new procedures...like counting by machine and counting by hands....do we really want another FLA Chad "NIGHTMARE"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20009195

BBC one ain't bad if you are looking for another alternative. The states update slowly in colour for some reason, but its not that bad. They have O 78- R 76

It looks like Romney is winning in the bible belt if the projections hold.

Which bible?

/mormonjoke

AFAIK, the Mormons use the old and new testament, along with their own fan-fic of middling quality. /mormonrazzing.

...I have no idea why elections are declared before they've even counted the votes.

only the states that don't really matter have been counted yet


it will take a month for NY votes to be figured out alone


but Obummer will have it in the bag by 11 PM PST tonight


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feeder wrote:
AFAIK, the Mormons use the old and new testament, along with their own fan-fic of middling quality. /mormonrazzing.

Mormanism should really make everyone second guess religion

here is a guy who loves him a bunch of ladies so he invents a religion so he can sleep with them all and not feel he was doing anything morally wrong.

I mean Jesus H Christ came to America nearly 2000 years after he had died and told a man in Utah of all places it was cool to have lots of women, as long as you married them all. See zombie Jesus figured one wife was hard enough, no man in his right mind would want more than one, but not this man. This man had seen a zombie Jesus, now he had a church to build and a harem to build as well.


I mean come on, these works of fiction are clearly correct, right?

 Testify wrote:
...I have no idea why elections are declared before they've even counted the votes.

Because once you get a representative sample it's pretty easy to predict with overwhelming confidence which way the election as a whole is going. For example, an extremely conservative state can be called for Romney as soon as the polls close, even if only 0.0001% of the vote has been officially counted (and only waiting that long because there's a policy of not doing it any sooner). Or, if the current count shows 55% Obama 45% Romney with 30% of the vote counted it's safe to say Obama is going to win if the remaining 70% consists mostly of districts that always favor democrats. Sure, there's a tiny chance that the early call could be wrong, but we're talking about unofficial statements by the media, not binding legal declarations by the government, so they can afford to accept a 1% chance of being wrong.

As for Florida, the last time I heard with 78% of the vote in there was only like a 200 vote difference with each candidate having over 3.3 million votes.

Personally I liked where a couple of states were given to Obama with 0 votes for either candidate.