What time do you think the major networks will call the election - whether it’s tomorrow night or early Wednesday? Or do you think we’ll be looking at a 2000-type recount scenario where the winner isn’t known for days or weeks?
My guess is, it gets called for Obama somewhere around 1:30 AM EST. Most or all of the networks will be very cautious about calling OH, VA, and FL, and possibly CO, so we’re looking at a relatively late call. There’s a possibility that a couple of those states will still be up in the air at that hour, but I suspect that there will be a large enough EV lead that calling any one of those will push Obama past the 270 mark. I think it will be the call on Ohio that seals it.
There is some discussion and some predictions in this thread. I think it’ll probably be over by 1 a.m. Eastern - by that I mean the news stations will have called the election they’ll be waiting for a concession speech will be - and I’m sure it’ll be over by 2.
Agree - that is not to say there might be some state that is too close to call (Florida or Virginia for example), but I think that state will no longer make a difference by the time the other states have been called.
My guess is, like last time, the minute polls close on the West Coast there will only be some slight interest for what happens here in Nevada. Then you can all go to bed, knowing Obama has been re-elected.
So do I (that is, that it will be called at 11 PM Eastern).
I also predict that, for the first time since 1916, California’s electoral votes will matter. Not that there’s any doubt that they will all go to Obama, mind you - just that neither side will have a majority without them. Why, yes, I did just predict an Obama win, didn’t I?
I will toot my own horn: I’m on record in the prediction thread with a prediction of 332 EVs, called at 11:00 PM ET (in this thread). I’m probably on the nose with the electoral college, and very close with the time.
Closer to 11:20, but in that ballpark. Like I was just saying in another thread, this election was much closer than 2008 but it wasn’t called much later. The news services called it just after 11 p.m. Eastern in 2008 and this time it was called between 11:15 and 11:20 p.m.
The big difference is that in 2008, enough states had been called so that exactly at 11 pm Eastern, when the polls in California closed and that state could be called, Obama could be declared the winner. This year even when California and the other western states were called, he didn’t have enough votes. We had to wait until Ohio was called, about 20 minutes later.