Election Day!!

Wow. I haven't posted anything in a while, but I have to get my election day thoughts out in the open before I go crazy. Work will have to wait.

I have to admit that I've been pretty much resigned to losing this election for the past few weeks. But I also will say that I've always been suspicious of polls. We all know by now that the polls are predicting a close to fairly comfortable win for Obama. We also know that many of these polls are oversampling Democrats because pollsters assume there will be more Democrats voting this year. While it is true that the Democrat Party has registered more new voters than the GOP, that doesn't necessarily translate into votes. We can also look back to the last 2 elections and see where the polls were all very wrong.

I'm not going to get into the theories about pollsters intentionally skewing their data to demoralize conservatives, or to send the message that an Obama win is 'inevitable.' I wouldn't be surprised in the least if this were the case, but no one knows for sure. All we can do is look at the different variables in this election, and see that there are far too many unknowns for any predictions to be accurate.

Early voting will no doubt have some impact, as many people who may not have made time to vote on election day will have had weeks to do so in some states. My gut tells me that this will favor Democrats. We also know that many more black voters will go to the polls this year than in previous years because of Obama's ethnicity. It doesn't matter that he likely has very little in common with most black Americans.

It's sad, but many of them honestly believe that Barack is now going to give them everything they want. Seriously. This is not an isolated issue. Talk to the school teachers and find out what their students are telling them about an Obama presidency. They're going to be very disappointed if he does get into office, but right now they are fired up and going to the polls - at least it seems that way here in Macon.

I got to my polling location this morning just before 8am, and there was a moderate line inside the building. I waited about 30 minutes before voting, but in that time I saw 4 different people being told that their address didn't match or that they were at the wrong precinct. All 4 were allowed to vote. All they had to do was fill out a 'change of address' form. Is it that difficult to follow the rules? How do we know these people didn't go to another polling place and cast another vote? Of course, they can't be turned away, or told to go to the correct polling place, because that would be 'voter intimidation', and the ACLU would be all over it.

We're already hearing about issues all over the country, but especially in battleground states. Pennsylvania looks to be one of the pivotal states in this race. Erick has said that he now thinks that if McCain can carry PA, he'll win the election. North Carolina and Virginia should also be two early indicators of how McCain will do tonight. If it's still 'too close to call' in PA and VA when the polls close, then I'd say we have a shot. I would love nothing more than for the media, all the pollsters, and all of Europe to once again be proved wrong. I think it's going to be close, but I'm praying for a good night.