Category: Old Dish

“What’s struck me is the absolute joy our small company has taken in voting. There have been jokes and jeers for the last few months, but now everyone is just having a great time, encouraging each other to get the hell out there and pull the lever. In the cast of characters: our designer, a Bulgarian immigrant, voted for the first time. A fellow writer, a Canadian by birth, married to a Navy aviator, became a citizen specifically to vote in this election. Our receptionist, an African-American working her way through college, is throwing a post-election bash. A .NET developer, a man with musical talent, is lending his craft to a different party.
It’s like the post-rugby match party already. We’ve been beating the hell out of each other around the water cooler, but now we’re all pals around the keg. Hope it lasts.
I love my country.” Me too.

His projected electoral vote tally? 311 – 213. A wipe-out. But these are not real numbers, real votes, or anything else like it. And he’s vague about Ohio and Pennsylvania. So beware.

From Daily Kos looking at exit polls from Florida:

– – – – 2000 -2004

Bush – – 65 – -53
Gore – – 35 – –
Kerry – – – – -46

Cuban-Americans

– – – – 2000 -2004

Bush – – 82 – -68
Gore – – 17 – –
Kerry – – – – -32

Ruy Teixeira’s having a good day, it seems.

A huge swing in the Tradesports market.

FROM MANHATTAN: “I’m sitting here looking uptown at the Empire State Building. Red, white, and blue shining in a rapidly darkening sky. Somewhere between the Whittier poem and the light I found my own tears in a world full of hope.”

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.