Decision 2004: And now we wait...

Everyone hopes that their game will win. But right now, no one knows. Exit polls won't be useful in any remotely close states until the end of the day (beware of anyone trying to toss around any exit polls in battle ground states until the end of the day - whether they be for Bush or Kerry).

We'll keep this blog running throughout the day and see how things go.

5pm EST: Only a couple hours left until the polls close in a few states. At that point, we'll be able to start looking and seeing the results. Even in states that are solid Bush or Kerry, we can compare the results with the various polls on-line to see how close they are. If a solid Bush state leans Kerry or a solid Kerry state leans Bush, we may get an early idea of what is going to be the result.

8pm EST: Projected final result: Kerry victory by 3% (51% to 48%) nationally (from looking at a ton of exit polls). Let's see how close they are.

9pm EST: Not a land slide that's for sure.  Bush has taken Bush states and Kerry has taken Kerry states. Florida and Ohio are still unknown. Feeling a little bit better about Bush as it appears exit polling may not be quite as on as originally expected and absentee ballots going more heavily in favor of Bush. Stay tuned...

10pm EST: Looking at the various states ACTUAL vote the news for Bush is pretty good. I'm not going to talk about states that only have partial returns in (like Florida). Let's go with a state that has 100% in: Kentucky

2000: Bush:57% Gore: 41%
2004: Bush: 60% Kerry: 40%

So in Kentucky, a Bush state, he gained over 2000. If nationally Bush bumped himself up by this amount then that's good.  The same is true in Virginia.  From a statistical analysis point of view this is good news for Bush. But still way too early.

I remember back in 2000 when they predicted Florida for Gore how mad I was because they had something like 60% of vote in and Bush had a 200,000 vote lead. Same is happening this time. So don't get too excited that Bush has a lead in Florida early on because it'll tighten up.

11pm EST: At some point they're going to have to call Florida for Bush at this rate. Which will be the first error in The Political Machine projection. It's got 93% in and Bush has a 5 point lead. Barring a miracle, it's going to be hard for Kery to come back.

Bush already has 400,000 more votes in 2004 than he got total in 2000 in Florida.

Midnight: Looks like Florida is going for Bush. Ohio is very close.  So my personal prediction is wrong (yay!).

But the official PoliticalMachine.com prediction is still alive:

https://www.politicalmachine.com/forums.asp?cmd=ShowComments&MID=122&CMID=122&AID=31475

Hoping it's wrong too!

12:15am: Ohio Ohio Ohio. It's all up to Ohio. If Bush gets Ohio, it's over. It's 51% to 49%. It's very close. I'm looking at it county by county and there's only one really big Democratic county left there and Kerry will pick up a net 40,000 vote advantage once that gets in. But that will still leave Bush with a 75,000 vote advantage and there's other Republican votes coming in.

And Absentee ballots tend to favor Republicans traditionally. So if Kerry can't get it under 40,000 soon, it's all over.

12:40am: For those who wanted to see what PoliticalMachine.com had predicted back on October 15th for the race: