Today, Barack Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States. It is with much hope that his assuming command of the country with help steer the nation to a much better future. A future where the rule of law prevails, a future where the weakest among us are not forgotten, a future where we can be confident that we will have reasonable health care, an environment restored, an economy built on strong economic foundation not one on mountains of debt.
These are troubled times that the country is now entering. Yet there is a feeling of hope that things will become better soon even if that may be two or three years away. Perhaps the calm confidence he has continually displayed ever since he started the campaign to become president has reassured us that he knows what he is doing and can approached the problems facing the nation with a competence that the previous administration failed to displayed at any time during its tenure. From the team he put together to help manage the nation, the people are reassured as well that the people on top are not ideologues set out to impose their view of things upon a nation but rather are competent people who how to get things done.
There is also a sense of relief now with the arrival of Barack Obama. A relief that the nation will not be looked upon by the rest of the world with a wary eye and a marked reluctance to aid it in its endeavours across the globe. A relief that institutions in this country have to undergo some sort of political litmus test before receiving any help. A relief that the arbitrariness of some of the security measures imposed on the nation since the terrorist attacks of 2001 will be curtailed in favour of a more common sense approach.
It may be too much to expect success to come rapidly given the scope of the problems but I believe that better times are ahead of us now.
There is Hope.
So it is the day after the election of Barack Obama. As you may expect, it is all that anyone is talking about today. It is a seminal event in so many ways not which the least being a change from the eight years of the Bush administration and the philosophies that have guided this nation.
It was a long night for me last night though not because of the results themselves. When Pennsylvania was called shortly its polls were closed and the trends were favorable to Obama in such states like Indiana and Florida, I knew then it was virtually a done deal. The call at 11:00pm when the west coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California closed their polls was a mere formality but one that had to be followed as it was those states that caused him to reach the threshold of 270 electoral votes. Still, it was nice to seeing such stalwart Republican states like Virginia come over to the Democratic side of the vote tally.
As the vote totals kept coming in, I hit all of my commentary sites on the Internet for additional results, and analysis. I brought my Mac out to the kitchen so i could use the computer while watching the networks. As for the networks, I stuck closely to my chosen ensemble of MSNBC, NBC and CNN. I had been using them for the course of this entire election season and I was not going to change now.
This morning I followed up on some of the outstanding races to be called when I finally turned in for th night. North Carolina is a state that still is yet to be called for Obama even with his 12,000 vote lead as there are many votes, absentee and provisional ballots, to be allocated but the total number remains less than Obama’s lead.
As for the rest of the races, Democrats have expanded on their leads in the Senate and Congress from the 2006 elections. Not as sweeping as expected but still quite decisive. Enough to give Democrats a mandate of sorts to enact some significant changes in how things are now done in this country.
Here in North Carolina, Kay Hagen decisively defeated Elizabeth Dole. Dole’s near invisibility in this state since she was elected along with her age and pro-Bush policies put in her in a bad spot but the clincher was the ad she ran accusing Hagan of being an atheist when Hagan was a prominent member in her church. For the governor’s race, Bev Perdue, Democrat, won over Pat McCory. At the state level, this is a solid conservative Democratic state and it does not seem that is going to change anytime soon.
So what now?
It is go to be a let down for me now as so much of my attention for the past year has been wrapped up in the presidential campaigns. Now that is over, I have to return to my mundane life and deal with the problems of making it through the days.
But I feel pretty good right now. Times are a changing and Barack Obama will see the country through a most difficult time. Choices are not going to be easy and we all will be called upon to make sacrifices. But I have hope that things will work out for the best. Just need some time to set things right.
Light drizzle here in the Triad today as Election Day gears up. I passed by a church serving as a polling place near my house this morning. Cars lined up everywear on the curb and all. Line stretched out the door but people were waiting patiently in line using umbrellas to keep the rain away.
Lot of people are engaged in this election and everyone is anticipating the results, the earliest ones we will see sometime after 7pm EST. The commentariat consensus is that if Barack Obama pulls out a victory in Virginia and is very close in Indiana, then the night should be very good for him. The clincher will be the Florida and North Carolina results. A win by Obama in either state will mean that John McCain has no path to victory given that Obama is expected to carry all of the states that John Kerry won in 2004 including Pennsylanvia with New Mexico and Iowa already assumed to be in his column.
Still, no winner will be officially declared until the networks call enough states for either candidate to pass the 270 electoral vote threshold. We will know the winner beforehand no doubt as 4-6 states will act as leading indicators for the nation as a whole.
I expect a long night for me as I flip back and forth on my television catching the results and commentary. I will move the computer out into the dining room too to catch the on-line commentary and track the results on a state by state level not just for the presidential, but also Senate and congressional seats along with the Governor’s race here in North Carolina.
Reviewing the various news shows this weekend, most of them were in some combination of predicting the results on November 4th and a retrospective of the presidential campaign over the past year or two.
Nearly uniformly, most commentators are predicting an Obama win on election day. Question is whether to what degree will his election be decisive. Most of the predictions fall around the 320 electoral votes range. The caveat in that prediction is that many of the electoral votes will come from states that he will eked out a narrow win like in North Carolina and Florida.
It is hard to say what the final day of electioneering will cause the results to change in any meaningful way. Same too as for any significant event that will change the course of the election narrative. There will not be enough time for the electorate to process the information and rethink their election choice. As for that block of undecided voters out there, about 6% of the electorate, the profile of these voters is that they are mostly 2004 George Bush voters. So for these voters, if Obama manages to keep it in a roughly even split, say 60% McCain 40% Obama, Obama should come out well in the end.
I think when it is all said and done, come Wednesday morning, everyone will be just plain exhausted and not just on television. I think the whole population is also exhausted to a degree with the election but not in the sense that they had enough with the election. Rather, it is that people have been so invested in this election as no other in recent history. There is a sense for some that it does not end because so much of their lives for the past 10 months have been wrapped up in the election whether directly through volunteering or contributing or just passively through following the news and opinion makers.
I think much of the involvement of the electorate has been amplified through the maturity of communication tools like the Internet and cellphones. The Internet, through partisan blogs and websites, has been used to drive messages, provide news and context and provide communities on-line for like-minded people. As a communication tool, the Internet has finally reached a point that it can compete directly with mainstream media outlets whatever they may be. Where in elections past we just get a very filtered version of the news, now we can get as many polls we can handle and also whatever news comes out of the campaign, we will know about it in hours. In a sense we are in the world of election information overload.
As for me, I would not know what to do with my life after November 4th. My time these days is now constantly searching the web for new information from the campaigns and read as many pundits and commentators as I can possibly read. All of that will come to an end soon after the election. No doubt there will be several days of post-mortem analysis of the election on who did what right and what they did wrong to sustain my interest. But I feel it will all essentially come to a conclusion of sorts by the weekend. Then I will be in some of political withdrawal for a few weeks.
After that, life will take its normal course. I think the family will appreciate getting their father/husband back. It is a glorious autumn here in North Carolina so I will take a few days off after Tuesday and enjoy it.
Over the next few months, I will keep tabs on the transition process and see how the government will position itself to act on the policies it had put forth during the course of the election. Bu as for me, I will disengage myself from politics for awhile and focus on more in getting in shape for the terrible recession that I expect for the first six months of the year. Life goes on but I do have hope.
Everything is now to the final days. Signs are good that Barack Obama will win this thing but you can never tell what may happen in the future even in the next few days.
If anything else, I might sleep a bit better after all of this is over.
How soon will the networks and other media call the Presidential election? If certain states are considered to be key to either of the two candidate’s chance of victory for the day, it is conceivable that we may know the result as early as 7:30pm EST.
Why is this so?
Using the Greenpapers.com site and its collection of polling time closures as a guide, we find that many of the states that are now considered to be battleground states will be closing early. This include the following:
Closing at 7:00pm EST:
- Indiana (CST part of the state closes at this time while the EST time closes at 6pm)
- Kentucky (CST part of the state closes at this time while the EST time closes at 6pm)
- Florida
- Georgia
- South Carolina
- Vermont
- Virginia
Closing at 7:30pm
- Ohio
- West Virginia
Now poll closures do not mean that the results will be known right away. Also, the nominal poll closing time in some areas may be extended because of line-ups at polling states. Finally, networks are loathe to call any states prematurely until a certain percentage of votes come in from monitored districts considered to be bellwether districts for the state. When those results confirm whatever exit polls they have on hand, then they will call the state for the candidate.
Having said that, four of those states (Ohio, Virginia, Indiana, Florida) were red Republican states in the past two elections and if we know that at least one of them have flipped to Barack Obama, then it is pretty good chance that the night will be his.
Indeed, the earlier that one of those states is called with something like a significant margin of polls, the better Obama’s chances. This is because certain states are considered to be in the bag for either candidate. States like New York or Wyoming will be called for the candidates as soon as the polls close in those states.
Watch for states like Georgia which are expected to go for McCain. If the margin becomes very close and a winner is not declared early on, that will mean that Obama’s support will be considered to be very broad.
In any case, by the time the Pacific states close their polls at 11:00pm, we should have a good time how the voting goes for the election.
Just a little more than two weeks before the election on November 4th for the presidential election and it will an anxious several days until then. While Barack Obama has a good lead now on John McCain in the national polls and more importantly a sizable lead in the electoral college votes, at no point should this be taken for granted. But the signs are good and I feel more confident now than I was in 2004 on the outcome.
But the lead can easily vanish with an event that is beyond Obama’s ability to control. It is unlikely given the control Obama has had over his conduct of the campaign to make a gaffe of any sorts can change the course of the election. Joe Biden may say something that gets some media attention more unlikely to resonate beyond a single 24 hour news cycle.
Still, it is questionable on what sort of event would change the election so drastically. We already had the October surprise in the form of the financial crisis which affected more people than other event can. even a terrorist attack will have to be outsize in the degree of the 9-11 attacks to make such an impression. A natural disaster like a California earthquake may take the attention of the news media for several days which affects the McCain campaign more than the Obama’s since it desperately needs visibility in order to catch since it is so short in cash relative to the Obama campaign. On Monday, we will find out how much the Obama campaign raised in the month of September. It has to be a large number given the amount of advertising it has bought to date since the kickoff of the campaigns on the Labour Day weekend.
Here in North Carolina, we are seeing at least one stop per campaign every week now. Sunday, Barack Obama is coming to Fayetteville NC for a rally. Sarah Palin was here on Thursday past and John McCain is in the state today.
Advertising seems to be a bit more skewed towards Obama but I think McCain’s is part of national buys for a show by region like NBC news in the Mid-Atlantic states. But the real serious air war is happening between Kay Hagan and Elizabeth Dole for the Senate seat. Plenty of outside advertisers like the Republican Governors Association and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. The advertising for this race exceeds the presidential race in numbers if not dollars spent. As I do not listen to local radio (NPR all the way) I do not know the volume of radio ads in the area.
On drives around Winston-Salem, yard signage seems to be a bit lighter than I remember from previous years. The city proper seems to be predominantly Obama while the rural outskirts is more McCain but not as much as one suspects. Similarly, bumper stickers seem to be 50-50 but not as much as from prior years. Perhaps it is better to channel your support into volunteering and get out the vote than just sticking a sign into the ground.
On other down ballot races, outside of the Senate race, there is not much talk about them. Even the Bev Perdue and Pat McCory race for Governor does not have the drive of the national races. Congressional races are quiet. There is some advertising for District 5 between Virginia Foxx (R), who once voted against Katrina relief, and Roy Carter (D) but the outcome seems a foregone conclusion and is the District 12 for Mel Watt (D).
Early voting has been heavy since it started on October 16th.
Voters waited up to an hour yesterday to cast their ballots as the first day of early voting began at the Forsyth County Government Center in downtown Winston-Salem.
At times, the line stretched around the second-floor balcony and continued at the foot of the escalator down a hallway to the parking garage, said Rob Coffman, the county’s director of elections.
“If we can get 30 percent early voters or absentees, I think it will make Election Day go better for everybody,” Coffman said. Twenty-one percent of the people who voted in the May primary voted early.
A line of about 60 people greeted election officials yesterday when early voting began at 8 a.m. The busiest time was in the early afternoon, when some people waited about an hour. At other times, the wait was 30 minutes.
Donald Evans was the first in line yesterday, arriving about 6. He said he wanted to make sure he was in line early because he had to go to work later in the morning as a bus driver. He recommended that others vote early as well.
“To vote early, once you get it over, you feel happy about it,” Evans said.
By the end of the day, 1,733 people had voted.
Voters use touch-screen computers to cast their ballots during the early-voting process.
Coffman said that voters should be aware that if they cast only a straight-party vote they still haven’t voted for president or for any of the nonpartisan contests on the ballot, including a local bond referendum.
“The president is actually the first office you see on the ballot,” Coffman said. “The next is the straight-party voting.”
Linda Poller, one of the earliest voters, said she was stunned when she realized after voting that she hadn’t voted in the presidential race. She had meant to vote for Barack Obama and didn’t realize — until it was too late — that she had skipped that part of the ballot.
“I voted in 2004, and I remember now in the back of my mind someone saying you have to vote for president separately,” she said. “No one said that this morning.”
Both the computer screens and the paper ballots that will be used on Election Day specify in two places that a straight-party vote doesn’t include the presidential race. After Poller’s voting mishap, Coffman said he told elections workers to help get the word out about how straight-party voting works.
Source: Winston-Salem Journal
Not sure how prevalent the problem mentioned in the article of the straight line party voting affects the selection of the presidential choice but hopefully, it will be minimal and not play a role in the final outcome.
The days are pretty warm here in Winston-Salem and autumn is here. No excuses for getting out early to vote.