Thanks, septimus, for both those comprehensive posts. I’m printing that all out and sticking it on my wall right now.
I shouldn’t post when intoxicated. :smack: I thought I knew this arithmetic inside and out.
The hope is to sweep Colorado and Wisconsin (likely) and Nevada (unlikely if Trump is doing so well as to take NH).
Nevada doesn’t present until 0300 UTC. If Trump wins NC, FL and NH you might just want to play Russian roulette for two hours.
Stay up late election night, they’ll tell you on TV.
It will (almost – 2000 was a once in a lifetime deal) never be the case that it is too close to call when polls close in California (I feel bad for the poor, irrelevant Hawaiians). Technically, it isn’t official until January, but that’s silly. Every election in my lifetime (except one), we knew before we went to bed who would be the next president, even if there were a few congressional races and ballot referendums that we weren’t sure about until the next day.
By “stay up late” I mean, say, 11pm Central time on Election day, so, roughly, 2pm Brisbane time on the 9th? Forgo your afternoon naps.
This is pretty fun.
If I knew you were going to do that, I’d have taken more care. Here it is, more simply.
The earliest swing-state closures are
0000 UTC (4pm PST) Virginia
0030 North Carolina
If Hillary takes both, pop the champagne! If Trump wins both you can slit your wrists now. In any case we can assume the TV is turned off unless these states split. Expect network predictions soon after the polls close, no? Florida may present about the same time as NC but if Hillary loses NC I expect her to lose FL as well.
The big election closures coming up now are:
0100 Pennsylvania
0100 Michigan
0100 New Hampshire
Hillary desperately wants to sweep these three states. Know that Trump will sit behind the Resolute Desk (or whatever gold eyesore he replaces it with) if he wins PA or MI.
If Hillary gets both PA and MI, but Trump gets NC, FL you’ll have to stay up. But you’ll be either cautiously optimistic (if Hillary won NH) or in desperate torture (if Trump won NH).
At this point it’s all up to 3 and a half swing states further west — Wisconsin, Colorado and Nevada. Pundits have Hillary favored to win each of the three states, so she can win even without New Hampshire. On the other hand, if Trump won NC and NH, he’s probably winning Nevada as well and that’s all he needs to win the Electoral College tie! (Tie goes to Trump-Pence or Trump-Kaine.)
If Hillary got New Hampshire, things are rougher for Trump — he needs Wisconsin (or the Colorado Plus Nevada parlay).
I mentioned that it becomes a 3 ***and a half ***state endgame, if the polls close with OH * NC & FL Trump, PA Clinton. The extra half arises because of Omaha. …
In both the NH+NV and the WI ways for Trump to win 269-269, Omaha’s 1 e.v. might (very longshot) swing it back to Hillary 270-268.
Yeah our neighbors are generous and welcoming people but I think the food and drink will have run out well before then.
Based on the answers here, this isn’t going to be the sort of election party where the result unfolds as we watch. The result is almost certainly going to be clear a few hours before the party even starts.
Yes, if it’s a blow-out. (Hillary wins North Carolina or Florida. Or Trump wins Pennsylvania.)
But if it’s close, if Trump gets Florida and North Carolina, expect herds of lawyers, poll watcher/intruders and possibly (if I may say so in GQ without infraction) armed hooligans to arrive in a close state like Wisconsin (less likely Pennsylvania or New Hampshire which have Demo Governors). If the host has invited you to see it through to the bitter end you may not be able to go home for weeks!
Well it has been in the past and there is no chance that the electoral college will be an issue if its stacked toward Clinton.
But if the college is notionally pro-trump there might be those in it who decide they can support Trump coming 2nd but not coming first and they vote for Clinton…
Crap … I’ve never had to slit my wrists over an election before …
Just remember–not across the wrist but rather longways. :eek:
And to further explain that bit about Omaha: Each state decides for itself how it’s going to allocate its electoral votes. 96% of the states have chosen basically the same method: Hold a popular vote, and then whoever gets the most of those votes, gets all of the state’s EVs. Maine and Nebraska, however, just have to be different (this is something of a personality trait for Nebraska, which also has the only unicameral legislature in the US): Each of them allocates two of their EVs for the statewide winner (the two that correspond to two senators), but then allocates the remainder by congressional district, so there’s the possibility of the state splitting. All of Maine’s districts are fairly blue, so there probably won’t be a split there this cycle. But while Nebraska as a whole is one of the reddest states in the country, one of their congressional districts basically corresponds to Omaha, the largest city in the state, and big cities tend to be blue. So it’s possible that, even while the rest of Nebraska votes for Trump by huge margins, Clinton might squeak out a win in Omaha (not unprecedented; Obama did it in 2008).
Thanks, septimus, for the corrections. I’ll just have to use up another piece of paper to replace the one currently on our wall… 
Also, I took the liberty of quoting you in this thread.
Huh. I’ll be doing two very different things on Tuesday: from 8 AM to 1 PM, doing door-to-door GOTV for the Dems; and from 1:30 to 8 PM, doing impartial “greeting,” at a voting place (unfortunately, here this mainly now means helping out with ID questions).
I’m in Wisconsin, so I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for the armed hooligans. :p:confused::(:eek:
We had some friends over for the 2000 election. We’re in the Central time zone, so we thought it would all be done by 8 or 8.30 our time. Friends finally left around 11, with all of us bemused by the US system.
Here’s a map of each state’s 2016 poll closing time and when that state was called in 2012 (courtesy of Washington Post’s Elise Viebeck)
Weather it is a close election or a landside election the electorial college doesn’t meet till December, right? Can they change their vote in any way from the publics votes in that region or State?
Yeah, but that’s not really a big deal. The population of the entire Florida panhandle - not just the bit that’s in the Central time zone - is 1.5 million, out of a total state population of over 20 million.
Yes, sort of. There are 29 states which have laws requiring electors to vote for the candidate they are pledged to, but it’s doubtful whether those laws may be enforced.
You could DVR the election coverage and then avoid the news and social media all day and then at the time of the party start playing the recorded coverage and watch it unfold. 
While the Electoral College can change their vote (certainly in 21 states, and probably in all 50 of them), it’s rather unlikely that any of them will do so, and unlikely in the extreme that they’ll do so in such a way that it would change the outcome. They’re selected in the first place for their loyalty to the party and the party’s candidate. There have been a handful of cases in the past where one has made a protest vote for one reason or another, but only in cases where the margin was so large that it wouldn’t matter.