What to watch for on election night
Monday, November 3rd, 2008Yes, you too can be Peter Snow! Or rather: John King. Or Chuck Todd.
TPM’s handy closing times map shows you which states will be called when. Some key times/states (ie when their polls close and they’ll start calling them – UK time) are:
11pm – Indiana, Kentucky
12am – Florida (some), Georgia, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia
12.30am – North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia
1am – lots, including Pennsylvania, Montana, Missouri and North Dakota
2am – lots, including Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Minnesota
3am – several, including Nevada and Iowa
4am – California, Oregon and Washington
5am – Alaska
According to polling guru Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com, the five states to watch are Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Nevada. “Essentially all relevant electoral scenarios involve some combination of these five states,” he writes here.
Chuck Todd gives his state-by-state guide here – while MSNBC also has a very useful piece on what to look for as the results start coming in. For example:
“7pm… Pay particular attention to Indiana and Virginia… You can posit to the party-goers that they are in for a Democratic “wave” if NBC News projects that Sen. Barack Obama has won Indiana and Virginia… But if the night begins with a McCain win in Virginia, then it’s shaping up as a longer night than most Democrats expect (read: If you’re a Dem, now’s the time you may want to switch from beer to coffee)…
At 7:30 p.m., North Carolina and Ohio polls close. At the simplest level it’s hard to devise a plausible scenario in which McCain loses Ohio and still manages to win the presidency. Based on recent polling, the current electoral math just doesn’t add up for McCain without a win in Ohio. Similarly, an Obama victory in North Carolina would seem to seal McCain’s fate…
8pm: A McCain win in Pennsylvania would defy expectations. It would also signal polling there at the start of this week was either wrong or outdated. And if polling was wrong there, where else was it wrong?
9pm… Also closing at 9 is Colorado. If the presidential race is still up in the air, the outcome could hinge on Colorado…”
And so on. You get the idea. Highly useful, and I may well just print out a copy to crib on the bus as I head into town for the election night party…
