Author: Andrew Sullivan

A tidbit of an amazing day:

At the Earle Brown Elementary School in Brooklyn Center, where about 130 people voted per hour through the morning, one woman got to skip to the front because she was in labor, election judge Nancy Carlson said. “Two minutes labor and she’s still in line to vote,” Carlson said. Once the woman cast her ballot, she was put into a wheelchair and wheeled away, Carlson said.

God bless America.

FROM FLORIDA: “You want anecdotal evidence? Greetings from ground zero here in Broward County, Florida. All you see at the polls are long lines of black, brown, tan, jewish, gay, female and young people. The lines look like a Bette Midler concert audience, circa 1980. On every corner, there’s a college kid waving a “Honk for Kerry” sign. The kids don’t want to be drafted. The parents and grandparents don’t want the kids to be drafted. The gays want privacy in their bedrooms. Republican voter suppression tactics have energized the supposedly suppressed. Everyone’s getting even for the perceived injustice of 2000.”

They read this John Greenleaf Whittier verse out loud on NPR. Strangely moving:

“The Poor Voter on Election Day.”

To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
To-day, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My palace is the people’s hall,
The ballot-box my throne!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day;
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.
To-day let pomp and vain pretence
My stubborn right abide;
I set a plain man’s common sense
Against the pedant’s pride.
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!

Keep voting, guys. It’s what we’re fighting for.

More data here. Kerry seems to be winning. But Ohio and Florida are mighty close. Daschle, I hear, is a goner.

A guide to what to look out for tonight.

FROM MARYLAND: “My gut feeling is that a lot of lifelong Republicans (my 73-y-o dad, for one; other male relatives, all New Englanders) are not voting for either candidate.
They are either staying home or, due to ingrained civic habit, casting a vote on everything from Senate to school bond issues, but not choosing a president. Of course, repeated often enough, this will help choose Kerry. My take on this is that they want to preserve their future right to grumble at the dinner table, “hey, don’t look at me, I didn’t vote for the guy.” But they are also moral people – not perfect, not paragons, but men who strive to do the right thing even when it’s not easy, or not easily explained. W. is a coasting rich boy fr/ the get-go. Even his apologists know this. His utter indifference to everything but his own grip on power is too much for many “good Republicans” to take. Ergo, big turnout, but not so big proportion of Bush votes.”

SOME MORE: These numbers look more reliable. But remember these are exit polls, not real votes. And early numbers are not necessarily predictive of the final tally:

GWB JFK

OH 49 – 50

FL 49 – 50

VA 52 – 47

WI 48 – 51

CT 40 – 50

IA 45 – 53

MO 54 – 45

MN 44 – 54

AR 54 – 45

NM 48 – 50

NJ 45 – 53

MI 47 – 51

“I agree that the Wonkette numbers look out of line a little, but as a Minnesotan I wanted to say a couple of things about press coverage of my state. When people talk about Minnesota becoming a battleground state, they talk about how small Gore’s margin of victory was in 2000, but they neglect to mention that Ralph Nader took 5% of the vote here that year. I guarantee you that Nader will not be the factor he was in 2000 this year.
The other thing that people bring up is that we have a Republican governor. Again, this only gives part of the picture. Our governor was elected with 44% of the vote. The moderate to left split between an independent who was formerly a conservative (for Minnesota) Democrat and a Democratic party hack of a candidate who makes John Kerry seem engaging. I do see a marked shift rightward in Minnesota, but we’re a ways away from completely abandoning the old farmer labor coalition.” Thanks. If any of you have interesting anecdotes voting today, any straws in the wind on the ground, let me know and I’ll post the more interesting ones.

Those numbers I posted, as I wrote at the time, may well not hold up throughout the day. A few look way off to me, as I wrote. But few GOP bigwigs are disputing that the early exit numbers are not encouraging for Bush. Oh, and whomever you’re voting for, for Pete’s sake, don’t be put off by exit polls. As I said earlier, they are not accounting for early voting, and some seem to have a heavy female bias. They are a blur of a blur. So stay tuned. And vote.

Whereby you cast a vote to piss someone else off; or hope for Kerry’s victory to bring misery to Bill O’Reilly; or Bush’s victory to piss off Michael Moore. Dumb, but irresistible.

THE ENEMY STRIKES: Another Jihadist murder – this time aimed directly at the West’s freedom of speech:

A Dutch filmmaker who had received death threats after releasing a movie criticizing the treatment of women under Islam was slain in Amsterdam on Tuesday, police said. A suspect, a 26-year-old man with dual Dutch-Moroccan nationality, was arrested after a shootout with officers that left him wounded, police said. Filmmaker Theo van Gogh had been threatened after the August airing of the movie “Submission,” which he made with a right-wing Dutch politician who had renounced the Islamic faith of her birth. Van Gogh had received police protection after its release.

We often hear cant about suicide bombers being “martyrs”. Nope, Theo van Gogh is a martyr – for exposing the misogyny at the heart of Islamism.

BEWARE THE EXIT POLLS: Mark Blumenthal helps us out again. But of course if I come across any today, I’ll leak them.

Some straws in the wind (via Wonkette):

Kerry – Bush
AZ 45-55
CO 48-51
LA 42-57
MI 51-48
WI 52-48
PA 60-40
OH 52-48
FL 51-48
MICH 51-47
NM 50-48
MINN 58-40
WISC 52-43
IOWA 49-49
NH 57-41

Not sure whether this will hold up throughout the day, of course. Those huge margins for Kerry in Pennsylvania and Minnesota look way out of line to me. But we’ll see. A Kerry landslide? Could be. Could be.

Over at National Review, calm does not prevail:

Do not, again, do not take any exit poll resports too seriously. JUST GET OUT THE VOTE. Exit polls not always reliable, ESPECIALLY early ones. AND, this isn’t over until the polls close. So please get to work while there is still time.
DO NOT get depressed. DO NOT get mad. JUST GET OUT THE VOTE.

Chill, Kathryn. The American people are speaking. Even if you might not like what they have to say. At least as far as the early buzz is concerned.

I’m taking the beagle for a walk, getting lunch at my local diner, finishing an overdue freelance piece and then going on a bike ride. If there were any time that a blog should be silent, it’s now. As I write this, as you read this, hundreds of thousands are silently, privately marking their votes. They do so in peace, and there’s a kind of gravity about that in this noisy insta-culture. Yes, I’ll post any exit polls if and when I get any. But these few hours are a pause in the chattering and venting and spinning. The arguments are over. Let’s enjoy the quiet for just a tiny bit longer.