Election Day 2016 Live

00:02
As I was leaving work, I got to see the first vote drop for this Election- and it was awesome. In New Hampshire, communities with less than a hundred people can open their polls and cast their votes at Midnight- and they kicked things off with the usual trio of Dixville Notch, Hart's Location and Millsfield. Hillary Clinton took the first two towns and Trump took the third. After all the dust had settled in the midnight voting, Donald Trump had a seven-vote lead.

Just a fair warning to everyone: this is going to get nerdy. If you don't want to see me get my nerd on, try a different blog, because to me, Elections are beautiful things. Yes, the candidates were underwhelming or just plain awful this time around. Yes, we're all praying for this to be over quickly and painlessly, because hey- this is America. We like our Elections to be long, painful root canals that last months and months. But the process is the amazing thing to me. Democracy isn't pretty- as Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government- except for all the others." but it's an incredible privilege that people in this country have fought and died to secure and not every country in the world even has.

I think, if I ever get my act together and go get that PhD, it'll probably be in psephology.

I'm going to bed- but I might be too excited to sleep. This is like Christmas Eve for me- and the air smells like freedom and participatory democracy! It's official Election Day and in case you haven't noticed- I am PUMPED.

But, if you're suffering from Election Exhaustion, take heart in this mellow jam from The Doors. The end is (hopefully) here.

07:00
POLLS ARE OPEN IN THE CENTRAL TIME ZONE!  Go vote, people!

09:07
Let's take care of some housekeeping first, shall we? I'm here on the blog, on Facebook, on Twitter @litcityblues and on Snapchat at tnixon1983. Follow along for the shenanigans all day!

That said, let's talk Live Blogs:

Slate is doing something really interesting along with Vice and something called Votecastr this year- I guess they're going to be making projections in real time instead of just sitting on it until the polls close like the networks usually do. I'm not honestly sure how to feel about this- projections one way or the other could potentially impact turnout out west, but, let's also consider this is the first time they've done this and I have no idea what it's going to be like.

For non-frothy, non-tin foil hat center-right commentary, PJ Media has an all day drunk-blog going down. They're usually pretty amusing and intelligent if the left wing is not your thing.

If stats are your thing, FiveThirtyEight has a live blog going too- it'll be interesting to see how their model holds up once the dust has settled.

09:37
Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight have their models projecting the win for Clinton- and by a significant margin, 323-215. So if they're right, the map is going to shake out something like this:

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

So, something is going to have to go very sideways for the polling model to be wrong, but hey, it's 2016, man- so we can't rule that out. Which brings us to #TeamChaos.

#TeamChaos would shake out something like this:

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com
Looking at this, I'm not sure I buy it- Trump would have to flip Pennsylvania and Florida and McMullin would have to take Utah. While I think there's still an outside chance that McMullin could take the Beehive State I just don't see Trump flipping both PA and FL. I could see him doing one or the other, but not both.

However, the fun would just be getting started if #TeamChaos does go down. In this scenario, the election would go to Congress. The Senate would take the top two electoral vote getters (Kaine and Pence) and pick the Vice-President. That should be easy peasey lemon squeezy- the House is where it would crazy. Each state delegation gets one vote, so the magic number is 26 and I have no idea how messy that would be in the current political climate- but the kicker is that if the House can't get someone to the magic number by Inauguration Day then the Vice-President would become President.

Alas, I don't think #TeamChaos will come to pass. But it's out there- and hey man, this is 2016. Anything can happen.

11:33
So this is what Slate's been banging on about in the lead up to Election Day. They're monitoring turnout as it comes in LIVE. Consider my NERD ALERT set to Condition Red. This is awesome.

16:47
Getting closer to go time here and I'm hearing some chatter about Michigan possibly being in play- but there's also a fishbowl problem at work here that's worth touching on. A few weeks ago, I read an article that said that this election was closing a lot like 2012- and even then, there was fishbowling going on. No, I don't mean bowling with fish- I mean the two sides of the political spectrum living in alternate dimensions from the rest of us. Don't believe me? Compare and contrast Drudge and the HuffPost right now. You'd think that Trump was on the verge of an upset according to Drudge and Hillary is ready to go, per HuffPost.

Tomorrow, someone's going to be wrong. But for right now, the fishbowling is annoying because it makes it almost impossible to get a clear picture of what's going on. I still think it's going to be Hillary. The only question is by how much.

18:04
First beer of the night and the first calls of the night. (My television network of choice is the redoubtable CNN.) Kentucky, Indiana to Trump (no surprise) and Vermont to Hillary. (Also, no surprise.)

21:47
Nail biting time now...  I knew it was going to be close, but god damn. Too effing close! I did not think Michigan or Wisconsin would be in play as much as they are. I assumed Florida would be a shit show, but I also assumed that Clinton would pull it out as well. New Hampshire, too? This is bananas. And this is our map as of right now:

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com
Right now... Wisconsin/Michigan and North Carolina/Florida- she needs one of each pairing to get where she needs to go. It's still possible, but...  eeeeesh. I shouldn't be looking at Canadian Real Estate right now.

22:13
North Carolina's gone. West Coast is in and the Electoral Vote looks a little better, but Michigan and Wisconsin... WTF IS GOING ON THERE.

22:40
#TeamChaos is back in the picture, oddly enough. Assuming things keep going like they're going- and the votes come in from Nashua to turn New Hampshire blue- if Michigan goes blue and Trump takes Wisconsin we could, theoretically end up with an electoral college tie. And haven't heard a like about Utah either.

23:07
Just saw Trump pulled ahead in Pennsylvania. And the fact that Ron Johnson held his Senate seat in Wisconsin probably doesn't bode well for Democratic chances there. This is done. Wow. Did not see this coming. But, I'm going to watch the end of X-Men Apocalypse and go to bed.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

This Week In Vexillology #195: Prince Edward Island

I Didn't Watch The State of The Union

Tintin, Ranked