[Local_activists] London GUARDIAN - election blog

[MichaelP]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/oliverburkemanblog/2008/nov/04/uselections2008-barackobama5

Guardian blogg - Oliver Burkeman's campaign diary
 	< http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/burkeman>


Join me from 6pm eastern, 11pm UK time


Here  we are at last. Tonight from 6pm eastern time, 11pm UK time I'll be 
liveblogging  election  night here on this blog, for as long as it takes. (In 
an earlier post I gave a different start time; I'll be here from 6pm/11pm.)  My 
colleague  Daniel Nasaw has written an excellent guide here setting out Obama 
and McCain's different potential paths to victory. Read  it!  And if you'll be 
at an election night party -- an election night  party  where  you're  also 
following  my  liveblog, naturally  -- why  not  memorise  parts of it in 
advance, in order to sound immensely knowledgeable?

Our  guideposts  through  the  evening,  of  course,  will be the poll closing 
times;  6pm  is  closing  time  in  solid red Kentucky and in Indiana, where an 
Obama victory would be a sign of a landslide. Once a state's  polls  close, the 
Associated Press and the main US television networks  will  use  exit polls to 
begin trying to make a call. In the most clear-cut cases, they'll call the 
state based either on the exits or after  comparing  the exits with the very 
first votes counted, but the closer  the  state,  the  longer  they'll  wait 
before  they're confident. In those closer cases, we'll have access to the 
demographic data  of  the  exit  polls  long before the state is called. There 
are numerous  reasons  not  to  read  too  much into them, though they may 
provide  early clues to national changes in the electorate, and to the scale 
of  the  predicted  record  turnout,  along with the reality or otherwise  of 
such  things  as  the  Bradley effect and the cellphone effect.  One  of  the 
subsidiary  fascinating questions of tonight is what  criteria  the AP and the 
networks will use to call the election. Given  the  pitch  of  the  excitement, 
and the historic nature of the vote,  everyone wants to be first. So despite 
all the nervous memories of 2000,  if  we  reach  a  time before the figures 
are in from, say, California, Oregon and Hawaii, yet Obama seems to have 
reached the 270 mark   assuming   those   deep-blue   states   vote 
Democratic,  it's increasingly  hard to imagine that the networks will wait 
just to make sure  McCain  doesn't  pull  off  some  Alice-in-Wonderland 
California victory.  (There  may,  of course, be big differences in which 
network calls  the  race when: Fox, not just in 2000 but in 2004 too, tends to 
move with the most alacrity, or prematurity.) Of course, once we're in that 
kind  of  situation, you can go to bed -- or go and get drunk -- confident of 
the result even if the networks are still being coy.

I'll bring you every result until we know a winner, along with news of notable 
developments  in  the races for the House and for the Senate, where  the 
Democrats are yearning for a "filibuster-proof" majority of 60 that  would make 
it far easier for a Democratic president to enact his proposals,  though  any 
major  boost from their current majority (51-49, reliant on Joe Lieberman) 
would be a big help in that regard. I'll  also bring  you updates from our 
excellent team of reporters in Chicago's Grant  Park  and elsewhere across the 
country. The liveblog will  begin as a single post; if it becomes unwieldy, 
I'll close it up and direct you to a part two post, and so on as required.

Ladies  and gentlemen: it's history in the making, and it's right here -- 
featuring beer, stream-of-consciousness commentary, links to other 
stream-of-consciousness  commentary  and  lots  of  Hard  Data. I hope you'll 
join  the conversation and keep me updated on where you are in the world  and 
how people there are marking this extraordinary night. Or afternoon, or 
morning, I suppose, depending on where you are. (Plus we have the Exciting 
Election Contest!!! to adjudicate -- not that we need much more excitement.) 
See you soon.