GO OUT AND VOTE!!!!!

[Trent Lawless]

I don't watch main network news results. Most of my time last night was on CNN, MSNBC, or PBS. Not that they're great, either. Also checked in online with US News and the Washington Post, but they were way behind.

But yeah, calling things before all polls have closed is a sticky situation. You want to give people news from places that have closed, but yet if you waited until everywhere (meaning Alaska and Hawaii) was closed, nobody would watch!

[pikemojo]

Our Amy Klobuchar vs. Mark Kennedy race was called exactly one minute after the polls closed. Granted noone even thought Kennedy stood a chance but it still seemed a bit too quick.

[Trent Lawless]

Holy crap. Ours wasn't competitive either, but one minute? I think they at least waited an hour or two here!

[Mad Dog]

They called PA for Casey Jr. and there were still polls open in the state.

[moderntimes]

To be fair it was kind of living in denial with Santorum/Casey race. Casey had been way ahead in the polls since the beginning of that race. That wasn't the race I was angry about the calling. It was Cardin/Steele. Steele was trumping Cardin early and they projected Cardin to be the winner. The problem was they had to RETRACT that and the race was too close to call for a while. Alas I didn't sleep at all watching coverage but last night was a very, very sweet night.

[Trent Lawless]

Having voted for the winner in the Cardin/Steele race, I also was surprised it was called so early. I didn't see that it had to be rescinded for a while, but that doesn't surprise me.

[Mike M]

moderntimes said:

To be fair it was kind of living in denial with Santorum/Casey race. Casey had been way ahead in the polls since the beginning of that race. That wasn't the race I was angry about the calling. It was Cardin/Steele. Steele was trumping Cardin early and they projected Cardin to be the winner. The problem was they had to RETRACT that and the race was too close to call for a while. Alas I didn't sleep at all watching coverage but last night was a very, very sweet night.

Exit polling data is what the networks traditionally use to make these calls. So data from the actual results may not be released yet, but by looking at the exit polls the networks try to make the call.

Unfortunately, exit polling seems to skew in favor of the Democratic candidates. In recent years it's by about 6% in most cases. This, coupled with the margin of error (usually about 3%) makes it difficult to call the close races.

I agree that it's frustrating to watch networks announce a winner and then have to change it to "too close to call" a little later. You'd have thought that they'd have learned their lesson after the last three national elections and the findings about the inherent problems with exit polling.

[GOODZILLA]

Did anyone else think the races were a little extra "combative" this year??

Here in Northwest Ohio, the mud was really flinging. Every single commercial had to do with campaigns, and believe me when I tell you that EVERY SINGLE AD was a negative attack on their competition. And the ads started back in August! I got sick of it. Completely turned me off to all the candidates to be honest .... especially in the Mike DeWine/Sherrod Brownsenate race.

I was so peeved about it that I didn't even vote on any of the races this year. Only voted on the issues.

[moderntimes]

mikem said:

Exit polling data is what the networks traditionally use to make these calls. So data from the actual results may not be released yet, but by looking at the exit polls the networks try to make the call.

Unfortunately, exit polling seems to skew in favor of the Democratic candidates. In recent years it's by about 6% in most cases. This, coupled with the margin of error (usually about 3%) makes it difficult to call the close races.

I agree that it's frustrating to watch networks announce a winner and then have to change it to "too close to call" a little later. You'd have thought that they'd have learned their lesson after the last three national elections and the findings about the inherent problems with exit polling.

Right. And in some cases (read: Casey/Santorum) that's fine. However most of us have been anticipating a tough race in Maryland and MSNBC calls it probably 15-20 minutes after the polls close. This led to a domino effect and everyone started calling the race as if it were over. I'd just like for the networks to learn their lesson. We don't have to know the results right away.

On a side note: Matthews/Olbermann did a really great job last night, aside from the whole Maryland debacle, and MSNBC's panel is always ****.

[Mad Dog]

bad2begood said:

Did anyone else think the races were a little extra "combative" this year??

Here in Northwest Ohio, the mud was really flinging. Every single commercial had to do with campaigns, and believe me when I tell you that EVERY SINGLE AD was a negative attack on their competition. And the ads started back in August! I got sick of it. Completely turned me off to all the candidates to be honest .... especially in the Mike DeWine/Sherrod Brownsenate race.

I was so peeved about it that I didn't even vote on any of the races this year. Only voted on the issues.

Oh it was awful. I was getting 2-3 pieces of campaign mail a day and I don't even think I could vote for some of the people.

[Trent Lawless]

Funny. I was actually happy that in Maryland we were actually being targeted for political stuff, because it's usually just all Democrats all the time and nothing's competitive. (For the record, I'm a registered Dem, but in a Repub district.) We're never a battleground state in national elections, so it was kinda nice to have some attention focused on us for once.

But if I were in Ohio, yeah, I might get sick of it after a while!

[GOODZILLA]

Seriously, every single ad on tv was a political ad. EVERY SINGLE ONE.

Well, either that or a John Mellencamp Chevrolet commercial.

[Mad Dog]

It was just hard to deal with because the Presidential election in 2004 was awful. I remember on election day I stood in line for 3 hours just to vote. Though I couldn't get tickets when Bush came to speak at Nationwide.

[Tournament Master]

Wow, 3 hours to vote. I have yet to wait at all while living in Jersey. I heard of some big waits in Washington DC, where I used to live, but I didn't vote back then because I was a student who's address was NY.

[Mad Dog]

And the worst part of that is I managed to cut about 1/3 of the line because I checked the distract map and noticed the line was splitting into the actual districts once it got in the room. So I actually saved myself 30-40 minutes with that move alone.

I also had to bus both of my parents in and then pick them up because parking was such a mess and my mom was the lucky one as it was only a 90 minute wait for her.

[gwffantrav]

WOW...I've never waiting more than 5 minutes!