Comments | anahata56: Pennsylvania.....

anahata56

Pennsylvania.....

Nov 04, 2008 20:16

Remains BLUE!!!!

All right now, come on--all that needs to happen now is the rest of the country has to follow....

politics, election

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anigo November 5 2008, 01:40:36 UTC

K, quick tell me what I'm looking at. How come Obama has 81 votes vs. McCain's 34 but they're both at 50%?

anahata56 November 5 2008, 01:42:53 UTC

Popular vote vs. Electoral vote.

The polls are just closing in a lot of places, but east coast is electoral-vote HEAVY. So if he wins a lot of the electoral votes in the east, the popular vote can lag and he's still got it.

anigo November 5 2008, 01:43:45 UTC

so the "votes" are the polls themselves? and the percentage is the actual number of votes?

anahata56 November 5 2008, 01:46:53 UTC

The votes are the tally of electoral votes he's won, where the 50/50 percentage is the number of popular votes, yes.

In America, you need 270 electoral votes to win the election. If you win those votes, they can call a victory even before the total popular vote has been tabulated.

This has worked to our disadvantage before (twice), but it looks like we might be able to turn that around tonight.

anigo November 5 2008, 01:47:49 UTC

Ok sorry for the ignorance... "electoral votes" would be...

anahata56 November 5 2008, 01:52:18 UTC

If you look at this map (which is a little behind, according to the TV pundits), you'll see that each state has a number inside it. That's the number of electoral votes that state has been assigned, based mostly on population. If a candidate wins the popular vote in any state, that entire state's electoral votes go to the candidate. So if Obama wins Pennsylvania by say, two percentage points of the popular vote, it doesn't matter that the race is so close--he wins all 21 electoral votes that he can rack up towards that 270, and McCain gets nada.

Clear as mud, isn't it? ;-)

anigo November 5 2008, 01:53:57 UTC

Nope, that actually makes a lot of sense.

Thanks, now I can follow it with a bit more clarity... for the next 10 minutes until I fall asleep.

FWIW, as far as I can tell, most of Canada's rootin' right along there with ya. (Though I can only speak for myself)

Don't stay up too late. You get up awfully early!

noelleleithe November 5 2008, 01:59:50 UTC

As a follow-up, each state's number of electoral votes is its number of seats in the House of Representatives plus its Senators (2 for each state). So Pennsylvania has 19 Representatives plus 2 Senators for a total of 21 electoral votes. :)

Also, two states, Maine and Nebraska, split their electoral votes based on districts. In all other states, the candidate with the most total votes gets it all.

anigo November 5 2008, 02:03:14 UTC

Oh, School House Rock, I'm just a Bill! ***Joy***

Pretty sad when I, as a Canadian, know How I Hope and I Pray that I will, but Today I am Still Just A Bill...

Gotta love US Public Television!

the_paulr November 5 2008, 02:00:08 UTC

I'm working the late shift tomorrow. I can stay up as late as I want. So there. ;-P

anigo November 5 2008, 02:03:30 UTC

Nobody likes a show off. ;P

anigo November 5 2008, 02:04:40 UTC

Oh, and now CNN has shown a big jump for Obama yet your site shows McCain in the lead...

Maybe it's best if I went to bed now.

anahata56 November 5 2008, 02:07:13 UTC

Depending on what map you're looking at, or what TV station you're watching, you can get different answers, because so little of the actual vote has been tabulated yet, and it's mostly projection at this point.

Virginia has been three different colors on that map already!

It won't be over till it's over, but it's fun to watch.

Nervewracking, but fun.

anigo November 5 2008, 02:08:47 UTC

Fair Enough. I shall wait for one more reload of the site and I'm off to bed.

Good luck!

anigo November 5 2008, 02:19:59 UTC

I gotta say before I go though, it amazes me how close the vote is, all things considered.

In Canada (IMHO) our top 2 or 3 political parties are differentiated only by the colour of their ties. McCain and Obama are polar opposites on almost all of the important issues in the minds of Americans (again IMHO, don't argue with me, I won't put up a fight, you'll win, I'm Canadian, did I mention that?) yet as it stands right now, out of 26 MILLION votes, there are less than 100 thousand votes separating the two of them.

Crazy shite.

anahata56 November 5 2008, 02:24:49 UTC

America is an extremely diverse country--and you can't always tell what America is by looking at the internet, or watching the TV. There are some very dark, very ignorant and very frightened pockets of America, and, unfortunately, race is still a huge issue in a lot of those red patches....

Remember, this is the country that voted George Bush into the White House--TWICE.

I think that's why an Obama win is so critical--but not as cut and dried as it may have appeared to be.

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