Although many people will vote tomorrow at the polls, my ballot was cast a couple of weeks ago absentee. I voted for Democrats and Republicans. When it came to voting for President, I’m sure no one who visits here will be surprised to know that I voted for John Kerry.

I realize it may be a little late to change people’s minds, but I wanted to speak my piece, and if I can convince one person to vote for Kerry instead of Bush, then it was worth my time.

(more…)

This snippet from Gallup’s explanation of its final poll is fascinating:

Before allocation of the undecided vote, Gallup’s likely voter model shows Bush ahead by two points, 49% to 47%, while the results among all registered voters show Kerry with a two-point lead, 48% to 46%. …

The poll also shows that among “high interest” voters — all Americans who express a high verbal commitment to voting, regardless of whether they have actually voted in previous elections — Kerry enjoys a two-point lead, 49% to 47%.

In its traditional likely voter model, Gallup screens out older people if their past voting performance does not reinforce their stated intentions to vote. (Younger people who could not have voted in 2000 are included in the likely voter model, based solely on the intensity of their expressed commitment.) Some observers have suggested that in this election year, the intensity of the public’s interest will stimulate a large number of older people to vote for the first time. If that is the case, then the “high interest” voter model could come closer to the final outcome than the traditional likely voter model.

Of course, it’s all within the margin of error, so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens tomorrow. But oh, the agony of waiting another 18-24 hours! :)

(Hat tip: Mystery Pollster.)

P.S. Of course, that’s about the popular vote. As for the electoral vote, if Real Clear Politics is to be believed, there are eight true tossup states left:

Florida (27)
Pennsylvania (21)
Ohio (20)
Wisconsin (10)
Iowa (7)
New Mexico (5)
New Hampshire (4)
Hawaii (4)

Those states have a combined total of 98 EVs. Assuming everything goes as expected in the other 42 states, Kerry needs 57 of those 98 EVs in order to win the presidency.

Florida plus any two of the Pennsylvania/Ohio/Wisconsin troika would do the trick. So would Florida, Ohio, Iowa and any one of the smaller states (NM, NH and HI), or Florida, Ohio and all three smaller states. Kerry could also win with Florida, Pennsylvania, and IA & NM or IA & NH/HI or NM & NH/HI. (”NH/HI” means either New Hampshire or Hawaii.) Last but not least, Kerry could win Florida, lose both PA and OH, but win all five of the other states (WI, IA, NM, NH, HI). That would work too.

If Kerry doesn’t win Florida, he must win both Pennsylvania and Ohio, or he’s toast. In addition to PA and OH, he would need 16 out of 30 EVs in WI/IA/NM/NH/HI. He could achieve that by winning Wisconsin and Iowa, or Wisconsin and two out of three in NM/NH/HI, or Iowa and New Mexico and either New Hampshire or Hawaii.

Got it? :)

The tally from New Hampshire’s early-voting hamlets, Hart’s Location and Dixville Notch, are in.

In Hart’s Location — fittingly — it’s a tie! Bush 15, Kerry 15, Nader 1. (That’s right… Nader cost Kerry the election. :)

In Dixville Notch, the result is more predictably conservative: Bush 19, Kerry 7.

So, if you’re keeping score at home, with 0.01% of the precincts in New Hampshire reporting, it’s Bush 34, Kerry 22, Nader 1. :)

Rain in Ohio? Dammit.

They’re voting in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire — and they were just showing the voting live on Monday Night Football!

(Yes, the Jets-Dolphins game is that boring.)

From the Times of London:

The campaign now passes to the small people. As of tonight the artillery falls silent and the infantry fans out across the land. In a neck-and-neck election all depends on canvassers, telephoners, drivers and the new political mercenaries, campaign lawyers.

I just followed Glenn Reynolds’s advice (and my Republican friend Brian’s example) and placed a bet on the candidate I don’t want to win. Specifically, I went to tradesports.com and bet $23.50 that Bush will win at least 300 electoral votes tomorrow. If he falls short of 300, I lose my $23.50, but if he gets 300 or more, I get my money back plus a $76.50 profit. Those seemed like decent odds to me, and it’ll at least give me something to be happy about if Kerry starts losing a bunch of blue states early in the night. :)

So I guess this means the worst-case scenario for me is if Bush gets somewhere between 270 and 299 electoral votes. If that happens, I’ll have lost politically and financially.

Anyway, as for my prediction of what will happen tomorrow… I’d put it at a 55% chance of Bush winning the electoral vote… a 40% chance of Kerry winning the electoral vote… and a 5% chance (at least!) of a 269-269 tie. I’d say there’s a 70% chance of Bush winning the popular vote. Yep, it’s official, I now officially think the inverse inversion is more likely than the repeat inversion.

I’d also say there less than a 5% chance that any decisive state or decisive set of states will have margin(s) of victory of less than 5,000 votes. People generally don’t realize this, but when we talk about 1% of the vote in, say, Florida, that’s something on the order of 60,000 votes. No matter how “close” the polls say an election is, there’s absolutely no way the polls can distinguish between a 60,000-vote margin, a 6,000-vote margin and a 600-vote margin. At that point, it becomes a statistically insignificant crapshoot.

If I were redoing my prediction map from scratch, I’d probably flip Wisconsin, New Mexico and Hawaii into Bush’s column, and Ohio and the 2nd CD of Maine into Kerry’s column, for a 273-265 Bush win. (Flip Hawaii back to Kerry, that you have yourself a 269-269 tie!) But I’m not redoing my prediction map from scratch; I stand by my 302-236 Bush victory — which, if it happens, will rake in the big bucks for yours truly! :)

May the best man win.

And may the exit polls roll in, sometime mid-afternoon tomorrow. I can’t wait. :)

Well, at least if his political career doesn’t work out, George can get a record contract.

Andrew Sullivan notices an odd disrepancy:

October 30 - Fox poll shows Bush up by 2.
Headline: “Fox Poll: Bush Up By Two Points Over Kerry”

November 1 - Fox poll shows Kerry up by 2.
Headline: “Fox National Poll: Voters Split.”

Heh.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the blogosphere, Mickey Kaus explains why he’s for Kerry.

But Andrew Tanenbaum of Electoral-vote.com gets in the best line of the day: “I will stay up all night election night and update the site in real time. I am NOT promising to stay up until we know who the president is. I would definitely like to go to bed sometime during the month of November.” :)

I just saw a TV commercial for The Fellowship of the Ring! It’s going to be on TEEVEE!! Woohoo!!!

Not that I can’t watch it anytime I want on DVD… but there’s something exciting about it being on television. It’s the principle of the thing. :)

UPDATE: It’s airing Sunday and Monday on the WB.

This is a fantastic game if you need something to procrastinate with. :)

(Hat tip: Becky.)

The entrance period for the BrendanLoy.com Electoral College Contest is over. We have 25 contesants; you can view all the predictions here. The contest rules are here. The winner will get a personalized mouse pad, t-shirt, mug or some such thing from Cafe Press.

Fittingly, given the closeness of the race, the BrendanLoy.com community is split right down the middle. A bare majority, 13 contestants, believe Bush will win the presidency; 12 believe Kerry will win. The aggregate prediction, awarding each state to the candidate whom the majority of contestants believe will win it and then totaling the electoral votes accordingly, is Bush 280, Kerry 258. You can view the aggregate prediction map below (colors based on the percentage of contestants who picked each candidate in each state):

The average predicted popular-vote totals are 49.4% for Bush and 48.0% for Kerry. Eliminating the two most pro-Bush and the two most pro-Kerry preditions from the sample, the difference narrows slightly: 48.8% for Bush, 47.7% for Kerry.

Six contestants predict that Bush will receive an outright majority of the popular vote; just two predict that Kerry will do so. Two contestants, my 1L friend Lisa Velte and my dad Joe Loy, are predicting “inversions” where Kerry wins the electoral vote but Bush wins the popular vote — essentially the opposite of what happened in 2000.

The closest states are Iowa, Wisconsin and New Hampshire; in all three cases, 13 contestants picked Bush to 12 for Kerry. In Florida and New Mexico, Bush is favored by 15 contestants, Kerry by just 10. In Ohio, however it’s 16-9 Kerry. Kerry is expected to win Hawaii by 18 contestants, while 7 believe Bush will win there, and in Maine’s second congressional district Kerry leads by a 19-6 margin. In all other states, no more than 4 contestants dissented from the aggregate predicted result.

No two contestants’ predictions are exactly alike, nor is any contestant’s prediction identical to the aggregate prediction. No one predicted that all 50 states will vote the same way they did in 2000, and no one called for a 269-269 tie.

Again, you can view all 25 individual predictions here.

I’m glad to see the Republicans, unlike those election-stealing Democrats, are taking the high road to victory.

It turns out the Red Sox’ lucky charm in the ALCS and the World Series was Jack Daniels. Heh.

Maybe this explains Manny’s brilliant fielding in Game 1:

LOL. (Hat tip: Chris.)

Kerry Haters for Kerry has “meetups” planned in New York and D.C. tonight to “pretend to work up a semblance of enthusiasm to do what all KH4Kers know they must do on November 2.” Heh. Excerpt:

Lukewarm, hostile supporters plan for big turnout; Outpouring of ennui and fatalism.

Election eve teeth-gritting, nose-holding, morale-fabricating events…

* Meet fellow Kerry supporters who are just as unenthusiastic as you are!

* Compare stories about how terminally lame your candidate is! …

Suggested meet ‘n greet lines:

– Do you hate both of them, or just Kerry?

– Do you think he’s a flip-flopper, or more of a straddler? …

– Is that a provisional ballot in your pocket or are you just thinking of Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter?

Tee hee.

I knew there was something inherently funny about the concept of Dick Cheney, of all people, campaigning in Hawaii, of all places. But I didn’t know what it was. Then I saw these pictures, and now I know:

If Kerry wins tomorrow, how will America make it through the next four years without Dick Cheney to smile his crooked smile at us? Whatever will we do? We’ll miss you, Dick… :)

P.S. Obvious headline suggestion for the liberal media to upset the Republican base on the eve of the election: “Cheney gets lei’d.” :)