Are we all excited?

 :-O  :-/  :-((  :-& (fail)  (erm)  (devilcheeky)

Morbidly interested.

I know the way I'd like it to end up, but looking at the polls it's muddying the waters and I suspect that there's gonna be a brexit type shock.

Oh and world war three. :C

sense of dread

Definite sense of dread, but I'm going to believe the polling.

One of the better polling sites - FiveThirtyEight - has HRC at 71.9% chance of winning. Many others have her much higher. This early Latino vote thing seems promising too. Seems Trump has energised that part of the vote by being such a twat towards them.

Everyone said the polls got it wrong for the EU Referendum, but I'm sure I read something saying that pretty much all outcomes were within the polling error margin. Whereas a Trump win isn't in the error margin.

I guess the general view is two sub-par candidates and if either had nominated someone better they would have walked it.

As two of our resident USAians, how do you see it?

Is it really just a giant douche vs a turd sandwich?

For anyone interested, this looks pretty comprehensive. I'm not sure how dynamic it is yet, 'cos nothing's been declared yet.

http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president

:O ONE MINUTE UNTIL FIRST POLLS CLOSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TWENTY SECONDS!!!!!

10

5

2

0

I used to be faster. :-((

It's all still zero.

Also what's the deal with the other names only being on some states and Colorado having a bazillion?

Why is Johnson above Trump in Maine?

Maybe they're still counting 'em up?

I don't know. And don't care as I'm now tucked up in bed, looking forward with some trepidation to the news tomorrow morning.

You're letting me down Graphitown. :@

Indiana is 0.5% reporting and 72% Trump, Kentucky is 0.3% and 69% Trump, New Hampshire is 1% and 53% Trumpy wumpy wumpy.

Not the best of starts. *farts*

Well, since you asked about the view from the USA.
- There are about 300 million people, and about that many opinions

- My personal politics are closer to libertarian / independent, with a big belief in personal responsibility, fair (not free) trade, personal privacy, and strong on the rights of the individual.
- Current tax and business policies in the US are driving companies and small business completely under and only strengthening those that don't need it.

- Candidates wise, looking at all of the political parties and candidates that ran vs my political beliefs, the closest to this was Rand Paul, furthest from this is Hillary Clinton.  That does not mean that I am impressed by any of the others, but honestly, it has never been about voting "for" a candidate, we nearly always vote "against" a candidate.

- Each State runs it's own election, largely under it's own election laws.  These individual state laws can have a large impact on who is elected, not just for President, but also in the congress and other races.

- The number of electoral votes (the ones that actually matter) are distributed to the states using census population information.  They are not distributed by "numbers of citizens", just total numbers of people who are in the state when the census is taken.  You could actually alter these results substantially by just having a bunch of Canadians visit their friends in MI for the right week.  This is actually much easier than it sounds, as Winsor and Detroit are virtually joined at the hip business wise.

- IMHO, CA, NY, and TX are "over represented" in both the congress and electoral votes.  This rather dramatically skews the elections, at least locally.  I feel confident saying this as I live in CA, but am originally from another state.

- My vote here in CA is nearly worthless from a "Presidential election" perspective.  CA nearly always votes for a democrat for president due to the way the voting districts are arranged.  You can vote for really anyone from Libertarian, republican, democrat or communist and it will have no impact on the outcome.





 

Just adding a bit more on to the posting:
- It is possible that Clinton will have clear victories in enough states to be declared the winner, but it seems more likely that there will be a lot of very close counts.

- In the past, voting by mail meant that we used to send in our ballots and most election offices actually never even opened them, instead just statistically assumed that the votes were similar to the voters at the actual ballot stations.

Of course, none of this knew that until the Bush / Gore election, so these are now more thoroughly counted.

There are some states where the voting can be done earlier than election day (example Sunday).  This used to be rare, now it is more common.

Don't be surprised if the final voting results, and legal battles go on for several weeks.

Regardless of who wins, the next 4 years will be one political battle after another.  There is literally no ability to create consensus here, as voters nor the representatives in congress.

In general this is probably good, because the last time we had a consensus of President and Congress, two wars were started.

Mike Pence, Trump's VP is from Indiana.  It would be a big slap if Pence could not bring Indiana in.

Kentucky is full of auto workers who have lost jobs to China, Japan and Mexico.  That was a big target of Trump's campaign and really the "center piece" of the whole concept.

New Hampshire - Probably not important.

States that will make or break the election:
- Michigan
- Nevada
- Colorado
- Florida
- Maybe AZ, but it is hard to believe that it will vote for such a strong anti gun candidate as Hillary.
- Possibly Ohio, but it seems likely that it is going to vote similarly to Kentucky