Squishable Pre-Dawn Open Thread
2 hours ago
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Does anyone else find this whole horserace thing a little absurd?
So I was just watcing chron 4 and they were saying that Obama has the lead in New Hampshire and McCain is leading in Kentucky. That all sounds fine and dandy and I'm sure there information is accurate. Then they proceed to say that they are basing this information off the 1% of precincts that are reporting in New Hampshire and the 2% of precincts reporting in Kentucky. Hold up!!!! 1 and 2%, well clearly that means that the race is won in those states, why bother counting the rest of the votes!!!! I'm sure that it is entirely possible, perhaps even likely that these results will be accurate, nevertheless, it seems absurd.
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7 comments:
Yeah...the news networks call these things pretty early since most of these states aren't swing states. I'm currently watching Fox News and it's quite interesting to see them whine...
It is a little ridiculous to call an election in a state based solely on 1% of the vote. But the truth is, the networks are right most of the time. They don't even have to usually count the votes. For example, you could know probably on one vote how Oklahoma and Wyoming are going to turn out. I have two questions though
1. I saw that one of the networks had already projected a McCain win in, I want to say...Virginia? with a 51/48 lead with about 12% of the votes in, but yet Texas had a similar proportion (51/48) with the same percent accounted for and yet they hadn't called it. Could Texas go to Obama?
And also, one of the networks had 102 electoral votes for Obama and another had 103? Where'd this single electoral vote come from? Or can journalists just not count?
It's interseting. I'm watching NBC and they're reporting Obama-200, McCain 90. So I don't know what network you're watching but i have a hard time trusting these numbers when they are so different. NBC is saying that Virginia is still undecided and that it is going to be really very close.
ok technology is crazy. I wonder how hard or even easy it was to figure out which state went to who. ABC shows that obama has 200 and mccain has 130 while on line and NBC show its 200 to 90 im so confused! How do they know find out all this so quickly!? I feel like it would be more exciting if they did it when all polls are closed and all counts are in and not basing it on solely 1%.
I think the difference is because each network is independently conducting these exit polls. Each network is releasing them at different times, so I think that's probably why it is so confusing. My parents are watching it on CNN and I'm watching it on CBS, and I'm getting each state a few minutes before they are. I agree that the exit polls should be based on a percent a little bit higher than one, but if it's worked in the past, I guess they don't need to do uneeded extra work.
I don't know what state I was looking at but it wasn't Virginia.
Though if you look on CBS they still are lacking in one electoral vote that all the other networks have. From what we learned in class there is no way a state or D.C. could have 1 electoral vote
unless it is one of the two states that split their votes proportionally?
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