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THERE IS STILL TIME: If you haven’t already, please go vote. You won’t regret it. (The act of voting at least.) You can find your polling place here.
ALREADY VOTED: Excellent. Print your own “I Voted” sticker here.
STATE OF THE RACE: Today’s the day of reckoning (or at least it should be) for pundits and pollsters who have spent the past several months making predictions on who will reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. for the next four years. We’ll be keeping a close eye on who got it right and who got it wrong but the prognosticator likely to generate the most ink tomorrow is the New York Times’ Nate Silver, whose forecasts have become a major media storyline in recent weeks as much of Washington’s chattering class refused to believe this race is/was anything but a toss-up.
ODDSMAKER: Silver’s much-debated “forecast” and “now-cast” are now one and the same. His latest projections have President Obama with better than a 90 percent chance of winning the election. Final Electoral College forecast: Obama 313, Romney 225.
POLLING AVERAGES: The Real Clear Politics national average has Obama up by seven-tenths of a point, 47.8 percent to Romney’s 47.1 percent. The site’s Electoral College projections with toss-ups excluded: Obama 201, Romney 191. With toss-ups assigned: Obama 303, Romney 235.
A LESS TRADITIONAL FORECASTING MODEL: Hallucinating Peruvian Shamans Predict the Election Winner
YOU VIEWING GUIDE: What to look for as the returns come rolling in tonight.
HAPPY ELECTION DAY and welcome to The Slatest PM. Really, go vote if you haven’t. Follow @JoshVoorhees on Twitter or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.
THE CAMPAIGN SEASON’S PARTING GIFT TO THE INTERNET: An outraged Rush Limbaugh reciting Jay-Z’s 99 Problems.
ELECTION DAY DISPATCHES: Slate’s political team is providing a steady stream of analysis and anecdotes from across the country today as everyone waits for tonight’s returns. A small sampling:
THE LAST GASP OF THE SPIN WAR: John Dickerson on what he’s hearing from the campaigns: “From the Obama campaign: Those Madison [Wisc.] lines are long. This is Dane County, a big Obama area. The Obama campaign said 10 percent of its 2008 tally came from same-day voter registrations on Election Day. They’re banking on it again. So if this holds all day, it’s a sign Obama is running up the score in the areas he needs to win. Obama folks are also reporting big turnouts in their strongholds of Cuyahoga County in Ohio and across northern Virginia.
“Team Romney’s best turnout facts on background from the campaign: Two-hour lines reported in Florida’s Walton County, a county that voted 73.2 percent for George W. Bush in 2004—21 points above the statewide percentage for Bush. Sounds impressive, but Walton is a pretty small county. There are lots of other GOP strongholds they should be boasting about. Walton went for McCain by 72 percent, which means it is the reddest of the red. The Romney camp is also saying there are hour-plus lines in Florida’s Escambia County (Pensacola).”
DISTRACTIONS: David Weigel: “We’re going to see more paranoia before this ends. I’m listening to Rush Limbaugh as I drive, and he’s informing listeners that a test page put up at Cincinnati.com, a list of early votes that was just written for fun to check the system, is possibly legit. “It has Romney up by 90,000!” Limbaugh said. True the Vote may be wasting the precious time of Tea Partiers who could be getting out the vote. Limbaugh’s at least serving as a distraction.”
SUPPLY-SIDE CAMPAIGNING: Sasha Issenberg on Romney’s late Pa. push: “Late moves by Romney and his allies to get on TV there seem like they may be evidence of what I think of as supply-side campaigning. Available spending opportunities narrow in the final days of a campaign: Several weeks before election day is too late to open and equip field offices, hire and train staff. A week out it is too late to print new direct mail and get it into the system. One reason robocalls remain persistent in our political culture, even though there’s good evidence they’re ineffective, is that when you get to the final weekend there’s nothing else to spend money on. … Obama has produced early-vote Frisbees distributed on Ohio college campuses; Romney has purchased TV ads in states where he barely invested a dollar until last week.”
MORE ELECTION DAY COVERAGE FROM SLATE—
Frame Game: Five Minutes of Romney Being Himself When He Though No One Was Looking
The Slatest: Rush Limbaugh May Have Just Run Out of Things To Be Outraged About—That or He Just Likes Reciting Jay-Z Lyrics
Politics: Want to Protect the Election, Young People? Volunteer As a Poll Worker
Future Tense: Should We Be Concerned That This Voting Machine Selects “Romney” When You Press “Obama?”
Victory Lab: You Know Who Else Had Good Ballot Position?
Weigel: God Bless You, Bumbling Philadelphia Election Workers
Breakingviews: What Will Election Uncertainty Do to the Markets?
The Slatest: It Got a Little Dusty at Obama’s Final Campaign Stop
Victory Lab: Big Labor’s New Burglar Alarm for Election Fraud
XX Factor: Florida, Montana Voting on Abortion Rights Today
Explainer: Why Are the Obamas Still Eligible To Vote in Illinois?
Weigel: The Black Panther Panic Returns!
The Reckoning: Romney Wins! (Playing the Contrarian Card)
XX Factor: Hormonally Compromised: How the Women of Slate Really Voted
We’ll have plenty more coverage tonight on The Slatest and at Slate main. But until then, tell your friends to subscribe, or simply forward the newsletter on and let them make up their own minds.
