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McCain’s concession symbolizes the passing of many torches,
not the least of which is the completion of the most historic screwing over in
modern American politics. Consider the evidence:
- In the
2000 South Carolina
primary, George W. Bush’s campaign conducted push polling
suggesting that McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child. Bush won
the state, halting McCain’s momentum from a win in New Hampshire and effectively ending
his bid.
- One they
reached the White House, the Bush Administration orchestrated a systematic
effort to overload the executive branch with authority, doing its best to
marginalize Congress—McCain’s milieu—and requiring absolute fealty from
Republican lawmakers.
- In
March 2003, Bush launched a war that most Republicans—and many Democrats—were
politically compelled to support. That war became deeply unpopular.
- Bush’s
plummeting popularity was instrumental to the Democrats’ takeover of both
houses of Congress in 2006, further marginalizing McCain in the Senate.
- Bush
left the nation deeply dissatisfied with Republicans and hungry for an
alternative. It was that country in which McCain had to run for
president.
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As the networks declare winners in the early states on Tuesday night, this map will project the winner in states where polls show that candidate has a more comfortable lead. For example, if Obama wins Virginia, where he has a six-point lead in the polls, this map will assume he wins states where his margin is at least two points wider than that. Meanwhile, if McCain wins Indiana—where he's currently up by one point—this map will assume that he wins states where he's up by at least three points.
As more results trickle in, we'll make note of whether the states obeyed this ordered logic. It may be that polling was more accurate in some places than others, at which point some of the imputations will be wrong. If the polling is roughly on track, the first few states should be a good bellwether for who takes the cake at the end of the night.
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With a Democratic win in Ohio, Slate is officially calling the
election for Barack Obama, whose convincing performance in early returns has
made it all but impossible for John McCain to win.
Even as visions of a mega-landslide victory for Democrats
faded with McCain victories in dubious tossups like Georgia
and North Dakota,
Obama’s core strategy paid off: Win all of John Kerry’s states from 2004 and
pick up a handful of moderate states that elected George W. Bush.
An Obama win in Ohio
preserves the state’s role as an electoral kingmaker. McCain had virtually no
chance of winning the election without it, and Ohio has almost always voted for the winning
candidate in recent memory.
Just how dramatic this year’s political reorganization turns
out to be depends on more final results. Virginia and Indiana are both still too
close to call, and many Western states are still wrapping up their voting.
While it’s still entirely possible that McCain can pull out a respectable loss
in this election, a win would require a miracle.
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Republican North Carolina incumbent Sen. Elizabeth Dole's loss means that for the first time in more than three decades, there won't be a Dole or Bush in office. Dole lost her seat to Democrat Kay Hagan. With 13 percent of precincts reporting at 8:45 p.m., Hagan led 57-41 with a lead of 245,000 votes. Most major networks called the race for Hagan before 9 p.m. In fact, Hagan was doing better than Barack Obama in many counties.
The North Carolina race garnered attention when Dole ran an ad saying that Hagan took "godless money." After that ad, Dole received sharp criticism and dropped in the polls. The spot faked Hagan's voice at the end of the ad saying, "There is no God." Hagan's response was direct. Since then, Hagan has filed a defamation lawsuit against Dole and her campaign. Even after the lawsuit, Dole released a second ad linking Hagan to the Godless Americans PAC. This could be proof of the theory that a really negative ad is good for the opponent.
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With the handful of states he has already won, plus those that are nearly certain to fall into his column, Barack Obama is nearly certain to clinch the presidency in the near future.
Although battleground states like Virginia and Indiana are still too close to call, Obama’s core strategy of carrying John Kerry’s states and tacking on a few extras appears to be in the bag. While there are no surprises among the states he has won thus far, his early performance has put to rest fears by paranoid Democrats that his comfortable lead in the polls was greatly inflated.
With a win in one or two states that George W. Bush won in 2004, Obama will have wrapped up this election. Based on the last round of polls before the election, Obama is already poised to win at least 264 electoral votes comfortably. A win in Colorado or another Bush state will push him over the edge.
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Early returns from Virginia are not encouraging for those who are hoping that Democrat Mark Warner's popularity in the state can push Obama over the top as well. Some had hoped that Warner, who is running for the Senate against fellow former governor Jim Gilmore, would produce a "reverse coattails" effect, attracting voters who support him to vote for the other Democrats on the ticket as well.
With 10 percent of precincts reporting at a few minutes before eight, however, it appears Virginians are more than willing to split the ticket. Obama trails McCain 43-56, while Warner leads Gilmore 57-41, prompting MSNBC to call the race for him. Students of Virginia politics will not find this terribly surprising; in recent years the state has rarely had a governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general of the same party, even though all three offices are elected independently of one another on the same ballot every four years.
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John McCain and his staff spent the last night of the campaign at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix. But early Tuesday afternoon, the biggest McCain booster in the place appears to a 13-year-old boy.
“The reason I disapprove of Obama is his liberal economics,” says Conor O’Connell, decked out in an oversize McCain T-shirt covered in buttons. “He taxes the rich. But in his definition, that’s everyone with a job.”
O’Connell is holding court in the hotel lobby, where members of Sarah Palin’s family are fawning over him. He goes to school in Phoenix—he’s a seventh-grader at Desert Arroyo Middle School—but he’s taking the day off after begging his dad to let him attend the McCain rally. “He’ll never have another chance like this,” says his father, Sean.
O’Connell says he supports John McCain for all sorts of reasons, chief among them oil. “Of course I totally support alternative energy,” he says. “But if we have oil, why don’t we use it before we go spend a billion dollars on research for other things?” O’Connell says his two biggest influences are his dad, a consultant and small-business owner who makes no secret of his distaste for regulation, and Ms. Kratzke, his social studies teacher.
The rest of his information comes from Fox News. “I do agree that it’s very Republican, but they give you both sides of the story,” he says. The rest of the media? Not so much. “When McCain and Palin make a mistake, the liberal media is on them like that,” he says. “But when Obama and Biden do it, no one cares. It’s so corrupt.”
Eventually, O’Connell sees himself going into politics, “probably as a congressman or senator or governor.” I ask him what drives him. “I just want to be for the people,” he says. “I just want to go out there and change things.” He says he wishes he could run now—unfortunately, few states allow 13-year-olds to hold public office. So “McCain is doing it for me,” he says, laughing. But he points out that the youngest mayor in America is 19 years old.
He already has a head start. In elementary school, O’Connell was vice president and treasurer of his class. He wanted to be president, but he lost—a tough early dose of reality. (His little sister, now in fifth grade, occupies his old seat.) But he has since recovered. This fall, his school held a mock presidential election. He won on a platform of fast food for everyone. “I wasn’t talking about McDonald’s,” he reassures me. “I said we want Panda Express and Rubio. … The fast food I’m talking about was healthy.” It wasn’t an easy victory. He ran against one of his best friends, Justin. “Of course this didn’t separate our friendship at all.” From that experience, O’Connell says he learned the value of knowing your constituents. “I listened to what the kids wanted,” he said. “I related to them.”
O’Connell tells me he didn’t run for student government this year because they don’t have any actual power. “I don’t want to take shots at them, but they don’t really get to change anything,” he says. Instead, he’s currently spearheading the creation of a school senate. If successful, he thinks it’s only fair that he would be “supreme senator.” “ ‘Students First’ is my motto,” he says, playing off McCain’s slogan. Not everyone is happy with the senate plan, particularly members of the pre-existing student government. “They call it ‘high treason’ or whatever,” he says. “I just want to get students involved.”
For now, O’Connell is following the No. 1 rule of campaigning: Reach out to your friends and neighbors. “I do influence my peers as far as supporting John McCain.” As we’re talking, several adults passing by comment on how articulate he is. “You’re the smartest kid I’ve ever met,” says one guy in a McCain hat. Connor agrees that most kids his age could learn a few things. “I don’t want to be like I’m all that,” says Connor. “I’d just like to educate them more.”
Later, O’Connell came outside to meet members of the McCain communications team. There, he shared his views on immigration and drilling and assured them that most of his classmates were McCain supporters. Michael Goldfarb, who writes the official McCain blog, seemed cheered. “I think we’re gonna win the youth vote in 2012,” he said. “I can feel it.”
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Exit polls are here! In proud Slate tradition, we bring you the exit polls bouncing around that they won't talk about on TV. The omnipresent disclaimer applies: These exit polls are 100 percent unreliable. They are not the real thing, nor are they guaranteed to bear any semblance to the real thing. With that in mind:
Ohio: Obama +8
New Mexico: Obama +9
Virginia: Obama +9
Pennsylvania: Obama +15
Missouri: Obama +7
Florida: Obama +4
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Although Barack Obama’s maternal grandmother passed away late Sunday night, Hawaii’s chief elections officer says the absentee ballot she cast on Oct. 27 will still count in today’s election. At the risk of being callous about this sad story, the subject of whether Madelyn Dunham’s vote should count is open to interpretation.
A similar case cropped up during the Democratic primary, when a South Dakota woman named Florence Steen voted by absentee ballot for Hillary Clinton but passed away prior to the state’s June 3 primary. (Clinton thanked Steen by name during a victory speech in West Virginia.) As Slate reported in a May 14 "Explainer," Steen’s vote was not counted; South Dakota law allows for the fairly quick and efficient removal of such ballots. States vary on how they handle this situation.
After Slate re-posted that column today in response to news that Dunham’s vote would count, reader Jon Cohen e-mailed me to point out that Hawaii’s election law contains a provision similar to South Dakota’s. Section 15-13 of the state election law’s chapter on absentee voters (PDF) explicit states that:
Whenever sufficient proof is shown to the clerk that an absentee voter who has returned the voter's return envelope has died prior to the opening of the polls on the date of election, the voter's ballot shall be deemed invalid and disposed of pursuant to section 11-154.
So why was Dunham’s vote allowed to count? Hawaii Chief Elections Officer Kevin Cronin tells Trailhead that, when an absentee voter dies, the ballot is not removed until Hawaii’s Department of Health issues an official list of the names of deceased persons to the city clerk’s office, which will not happen until later this month. Unlike Steen, who passed away several weeks prior to the election, the two-day turnaround in Dunham’s case creates “a practical administrative problem,” Cronin says, in fishing out her ballot out from among the tens of thousands of absentee ballots in Honolulu—even if her death had been officially reported by the Department of Health.
Robert Ichikawa, an attorney at the Honolulu firm Kobayashi, Sugita, and Goda, says the decision comes down to how one interprets the phrase “sufficient proof” in the law, saying the use of an official health department report is reasonable if applied consistently.
Even if Hawaii’s four electoral votes were decided by one person’s ballot, a challenge over Obama’s grandmother could not throw the election. The law specifically states that “[t]he casting of any such ballot shall not invalidate the election.”
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See all Swift Boat Watch entries here.
Who They Are: Right Change
Purpose: Though claiming to be nonpartisan, the group has run all anti-Obama ads.
Executive Director: Tim Pittman
Funding: According to IRS reports, the group received almost $5.5 million from its president, Fred Eshelman, who is also the CEO of PPD, a pharmaceutical research firm in North Carolina.
Cost of the Ad: $500,000
Where It Ran: Washington, D.C., and North Carolina through the middle of this week.
Claims: Fighting terror has cost America almost $1 trillion. The ad implies that Sept. 11 was responsible for the current economic crisis. After quoting Joe Biden's much-repeated remark about a crisis early in an Obama presidency, the ad says Obama's policies undermine counterterrorism efforts.
Accuracy: Congressional Research Service puts the price tag for the war on terror at $864 billion since Sept. 11 (PDF). Although Biden predicted an international crisis, he made no mention of the crisis being related to terrorism. There have been many reasons given for the probable cause of the economic crisis (Alan Greenspan, globalization, Wall Street). Sept. 11 fails to make the short list. Experts on terrorism agree that Obama's counterterrorism policy is actually very similar to current U.S. policy.
Background: Eshelman has been donating to the Republican cause for years. Two other board members are Republican legislators from North Carolina. The group's first ad made no mention of Obama's name but clearly referred to his tax plan. Until now, the attack ads have focused on Obama's tax plan being bad for Americans.
Swift Boat Rating: 
Invoking the Sept. 11 attacks is a cheap scare tactic. The ad also implies that Sept. 11 caused the financial crisis (unfounded) and that Obama's policy on terrorism would leave the United States vulnerable but offers no reasoning for this claim.
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John McCain capped off his seven-day marathon Monday night with a midnight rally in Prescott, Ariz., the town where Barry Goldwater launched his Senate and presidential campaigns.
After 26 straight hours of campaigning, McCain kept it brief. “We’re gonna win tomorrow,” he said. “And we’re gonna be this …” he paused, catching himself. “We’re gonna bring this home.” He stood at the base of the Yavapai County Court House steps with the biggest American flag I’ve ever seen hanging behind him.
They have a joke in Arizona, he said: that it’s the only state where mothers don’t tell their kids they can grow up to be president, after Barry Goldwater and so many others failed. “Tomorrow, we’re gonna reverse that tradition, and I’m gonna be president of the United States.”
He told a few anecdotes, including one favorite about a woman in Wolfeboro, N.H., who begged him not to let her son’s death be in vain. He promised, as usual, to put country first. During the quiet moments, you could hear a crowd of Obama supporters chanting their candidate’s name.
At the end of an epic campaign like this, it’s hard not to get emotional. When Cindy introduced him, her voice cracked on “my husband, John McCain.” Even McCain seemed to be getting misty. Instead of closing his speech with his trademark entreaty to “fight” and “stand up,” he simply thanked everyone who came out. “It’s great to be home,” he said.