England for Obama

Yes, 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 It would also signal polling there at the start of this week was either wrong or outdated.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…

See what I did there? The whole American-style comma thing in the headline?

A new LA Times/Bloomberg poll gives Barack a decent lead in both Florida and Ohio:

“Barack Obama is leading Republican presidential rival John McCain in two battleground states…

In Ohio, a state that has been battered for years by unemployment and plant closings, the Democrat is leading McCain, 49% to 40%, among people likely to vote.

In Florida, a state that was considered a likely win for Republicans not long ago, McCain is trailing, 50% to 43%.

In both states, Obama has opened commanding leads over McCain among women, young people, first-time voters, and blacks and other minorities.”

As promised, Barack’s rousing speech in Ohio yesterday:

“…in this last week, because it does depend on it this week.”

Barack delivered his so-called ‘closing argument’ in Ohio today, and yup, it was one of his spine-tinglers.

I’m afraid I could only find these two segments right now - they’re in order, the second one being the final 6 minutes or so - as the whole thing doesn’t appear to be online yet. Will post it tomorrow (when it presumably will be online):

Here’s a full transcript of his speech (or at least, the prepared one. So if you’re a total geek, you can even compare and contrast to see what he changed or improvised ).

The pundits on Meet The Press talk about the battleground states, and the current electoral map. The money shot, as they say, is 4:12-4:37.

(Note the new drinking game phrase of this election: that John McCain’s story is like a Shakespearean tragedy).

Sean Quinn over on FiveThirtyEight goes to an Obama rally and a Palin one in the same day.

That’s what Democratic strategists are cautiously predicting. Here’s what to watch out for on the night of November 4th:

“Four large states John McCain once seemed well-positioned to win — Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida — have in recent weeks shifted toward Obama. If Obama were to win those four states — a scenario that would represent a remarkable turn of events — he would likely surpass 350 electoral votes.

Under almost any feasible scenario, McCain cannot win the presidency if he loses any of those four states. And if Obama actually captured all four states, it would almost certainly signal a strong electoral tide that would likely sweep the Southwestern swing states — Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada — not to mention battlegrounds from New Hampshire to Iowa to Missouri.”

From the Politicalwire blog:

“An early look at today’s Diageo/Hotline tracking poll shows Sen. Barack Obama now holds a double-digit lead in key battleground states.

Among registered voters surveyed in Colorado, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin and Nevada, Obama tops McCain 50 to 40%. Just a week ago, Obama led 45% to 42%.

Nationwide, Obama leads 47% to 41%.”

Thanks to Matt for flagging up this article in the LA Times about the re-emergence - or rather: the re-emergence of the press interest in - Joe Biden, following him on the stump in Ohio last week:

“His mission is to win over working-class white voters resistant to an Obama candidacy, whether because of race, experience or the mistaken belief that he is a Muslim.

If Obama is seen as an aloof egghead, Biden is the guy from Scranton who takes the train to work, uses words like “helluva” and “malarkey,” and endlessly quotes his father - “Champ, when you fall down, geeet up!”…

For a regular guy, Biden is very well-tailored… Even as one of the poorest members of Congress, he makes more money than most of the people who took off work, if they have work, to hear him.

Yet many called him a “roll-up-your-sleeves kind of guy,” the son of working-class Catholics who understands that sometimes you don’t know how much it costs to fill up the gas tank because you never have enough money to fill it. His campaigning style recalls Bill Clinton’s; he listens, and people feel permission to use the few seconds they have to talk about their shrinking Social Security checks, their stolen pensions, even their divorces.”

And here he was at one of his stops in Ohio:

Don’t worry. Joe. We are imagining. All too clearly.