No.  NO!!  More updates!  More analysis!!  I want to know about Hispanic voters in Akron!  Wiccan vegetarians in Providence (and how many are women over 40)!! Left-handed spelunking dentists in Dallas!  C'mon, Crowley!  Give me the stuff!  GIVE ME THE STUFF!!

Or maybe I'll watch those episodes of "Flip This House" I've got on the DVR.  

I've always suspected that the campaigns themselves "leak" made up exit poll numbers and let them spread like viruses from Blackberry to Blackberry as a final push to game expectations.

Coughlin, Rush's trained drug-fetching monkey, says it's option C.

Coughlin is a smart monkey, so that's how I'm betting too.

A toast!

To the harried single mom in Columbus who, in the hug of the voting booth, changed her mind and voted for Hillary after all.

To the gas station owner in Longview, Texas with the "McCain" yard sign who waited what seemed like forever outside the high school gym before finally rushing in and voting for Obama.

To the young lady in Corpus Christi, the first in her family to ever vote in an election in America, who voted for McCain because he reminds her of her dead grandfather, the only one who ever really understood her.

To the part-time science teacher and full-time Huckabee fan in Youngstown who was first in line when the polling place opened this morning.

To the longshoreman in Galveston who once helped a fellow inmate get a GED and now thinks that Ron Paul is this country's last, best chance.

To the Akron dentist who...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but a million votes cast in Texas should be something more than 2% of the vote.  But that's what CNN's tote board keeps saying.

I'm waiting to see how a state with 23 million people casts 50 million votes.      

William,

The Galveston longshoreman probably shouldn't vote (unless he wants another felony!).

The sentiment's shared, however.

naomi,

The 2 percent is not the percent of the votes cast, but of the percent of precincts reporting. The early votes are what you are seeing with all those votes. They do not effect the number of precincts reporting.

eugene:

Yes, but even if they are early votes, aren't the precincts more or less proportional to the number of voters, i.e. 2% of the precincts should shake out to about 2% of the voters statewide?  One million voters should come out to about 20% of the statewide precincts, not 2%.

Naomi,

No, because precincts are drawn for numerous reasons. You may have towns of 500, 1000, 1500, with only one precinct. But cities having precincts for 2000, 4000, ect. They aren't not neccessarly drawn up on population. Plus, some precincts turnout in much higher numbers, so one precinct may have the same number of voters but not even close to the same number of votes. In practice precincts don't end up being equal to votes cast.

As far as early voting numbers, a precinct could have 2000 voters and 1500 voted early. But those 1500 will have been counted as early voting, not as part of the precinct. So, theoretically, one million early votes can be cast, and only 1000 people show up to vote, and the tally would read Candidate A 500000, Candidate B 500000 with 0% of the precincts reporting.

okay now my head is spinning.

Okay, makes sense.   Thanks for explaining it to me.

This down under TNR suscriber (since 1970) is amused by many commenters' obsession with primary election deails. But clearly there is an unusually high level of voter interest in this year's election, and that's heartening (in Australia we have to vote - how democratic is that, really?). As a US politics junkie, observing the next eight months of politicking is going to be great fun. My view  is that you all should elect  McCain , mainly because he's the safest on trade and foreign policy- but only for one term. That will give the two parties four years to come up with two sound    candidates who are centrist, not over 60, and who, following campaign finance reform (McCain again), are not required to compromise themselves by  raising obscene amounts of money to stand a chance.