Having learned this morning that the California polls don’t close 'til 11 p.m EST, I need to revise my guess. I now say 11:32 p.m. eastern. (By the way, if Obama has 190 votes by 11, he’s won it.)
Looks like BobLibDem and Liberal win this pool (I’m not gonna quibble over one second).
In keeping with my 190-votes-before-eleven theory (actually 193 - I can’t seem to get anything right on the first attempt), when Ohio was declared for Obama about 8:20 central time, I told my wife that Obama had won it. So I was tickled when, about 20 minutes later, Keith Olbermann used the same math to suggest Obama had it sewn up. (With the NBC Election Czar breathing down their necks, he couldn’t do more than “suggest” until hard numbers were in.)
Hooray I’m wrong.
For trivia’s sake, I think McCain called Obama to concede at around 10 eastern. I forget exactly what I said at my own party - I think I said something like “that’s it” when Pennsylvania was called for Obama at around 8:40, because I thought it would take much longer, and I said it was over and there was no way McCain could win after the Ohio call, which also came earlier than I thought it would. None of those are going to be considered historic pronouncements or anything, but I was only off by about 20 minutes on McCain’s speech, which I think is pretty good.
I am enormously glad to have been wrong. My boss has already indulged in a rebel yell, and if I didn’t have such a stick up my ass I would too.