FOX CALLS COLORADO FOR BUSH: I’m distressed by the talking heads raising the possibility of Ohio becoming this year’s Florida. Like Andrew Sullivan, I’d like this to be over. And cleanly.

JUST GOT BACK FROM ROCKEFELLER CENTER, where NBC has set up quite a show. They’ve got streamers running up the side of their building, red for Bush and Blue for Kerry, dangling from a scaffold with the number of electoral votes each currently has locked up on it. The scaffolds move up the building as more electoral votes are added; you can see a picture here.

There’s a lot of excitement here, though understandably less since Florida went for Bush.

BUSH LEADS IN OHIO by five points. 70 percent of the vote has been counted. (Live results here.)

THE STATES TO WATCH: If Bush wins Ohio, New Mexico, and Colorado he will win the election with 271 electoral votes. (That’s assuming none of his other states flip to Kerry.) It’s trending that way now.

OK, ONE MORE: CBS just called Florida for Bush. I think it was because of Michael’s taunts.

I’M DONE WITH THE TV GIG: Heading home. I’ll post a bit there if I can reach the site.

FEAR OF FLORIDA: What the matter, networks? Afraid to call Florida this time around? Et tu, Fox? It’s okay. I understand. I’ll call it for you. Bush wins it. He’s ahead by 4.2 percent with 93.5 percent counted.

STEPHEN GREEN:

New Hampshire, Michigan, Iowa, Nevada and Oregon are all trending Kerry. Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida and New Mexico are trending Bush.

Votes leaning Kerry = 40.

Votes leaning Bush = 62.

Stay tuned.

WAS ZOGBY DUPED? I have to agree with this statement: “To sum up- the pollsters screwed up, again.” Looks that way.

BAD NEWS FOR THE GUARDIAN: Bush has a 9-point lead in Clark County, Ohio.

BUSH IS AHEAD in Florida by 4 percentage points with more than 85 percent of the vote counted. (See here for the live tally.)

IT’S CLOSE AGAIN: NBC has just called California and Washington for Kerry, making it 207-199 Bush/Kerry by their count.

FLORIDA DEMOCRAT predicts that Bush will take Florida. I don’t know what he knows that we don’t, if anything.

DID YOUNG PEOPLE TURN OUT IN GREAT NUMBERS? NBC is reporting that, for all the efforts at bringing young people to the polls, the percentage of 18-29 year old voters is exactly the same as it was in 2000 (17%). And the number of voters in the 30 to 44 year old group has actually declined, going from 33% to 28%. Voters 45 and older made up 54% of the electorate. Even more interesting, NBC shows voters aged 18-29 split evenly (49 to 49%) on the question whether they approved of going to war in Iraq. Of course, this is from exit polls, and the exit polls reported earlier in the day seemed to have leaned excessively toward Kerry. So who knows?

ANDREW SULLIVAN: “I just want it to be over.” I’ve felt that way for a year.

IS MSM REFRAINING FROM CALLING STATES FOR BUSH that they would call for Kerry if the numbers were running the other way? Am I the only one who feels that way? Or is it only that the exit polls leaned for Kerry in Florida and Ohio and other places, so the actual, counted numbers aren’t enough.

NBC CALLS PENNSYLVANIA FOR KERRY, Arizona and Idaho for Bush.

THE TENNESSEE STATE SENATE is projected to go Republican for the first time in 140 years.

BUSH IS AHEAD in Florida by 4 percentage points with 79.2 percent of the vote counted. (See here for the live tally.)

MAINSTREAM MEDIA BLOGGING. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was running a blog, and at 9 it declared itself “all blogged out” and told readers to go to the main page or go watch television. What the hell kind of blogging is that? Anyway, they did leave us with some final Wisconsin exit poll numbers:

53% of those voting in the state were women, 47% men; 28% came from union households, 72% non-union households; 36% had college degrees, 64% did not.

… 38% identified themselves as Republican, 35% Democrat, 27% independent. From another view: 31% said they were conservative, 20% liberal and 49% moderate.

Some 54% approved of the job Bush has done as president, 46% disapproved; 56% said the nation is safer from terrorism than four years ago, 42% said it is less safe.

The top issues for voters: Moral values (for 21%) and terrorism (20%), followed closely by economy/jobs (19%) and Iraq (18%).

That reads as good for Bush to me. The MSJ blog just signs off with a shrug. MSM blogs don’t really seem to be real blogs to me. They seem to be presentations of reportable information set in a blog format, but just too devoid of personality and spirit to amount to actual blogs. They’re just pseudoblogs, blogoids.

UPDATE: (From Glenn) Reader Stephen Butler emails: “Perhaps they would find it easier to blog past 9 if they put on some pajamas.” Heh.

OVER ON THE WBIR CHAT SITE, people who are on wifi at the Knoxville Hilton, sipping cool drinks, are making fun of me for being stuck in the newsroom drinking stale coffee from a styrofoam cup. So I go over to Jeff Jarvis’s and he’s rhapsodizing about the comforts of home: “Cabernet in hand. Feet up. Remote in hand.” Yes, bloggers have better offices that professional journalists, no doubt about it.

CNN HAS JUST CALLED SOUTH CAROLINA FOR JIM DEMINT Go free trade! Less surprisingly, Harry Reid (D-NV) is going back to the senate. The Kentucky race is still too close to call.

CNN JUST CALLED MISSOURI FOR BUSH. Seems like no matter what happens, a lot of sacred cows of prognostication are going to fall: Missouri’s much vaunted talent for picking the president, The Incumbent Rule, the schoolchild survey, the 7-11 survey, the exit polls . . . and maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

THIS IS A PRETTY DEPRESSING PERIOD FOR DEMOCRATS, but that was only to be expected: Kerry’s going to carry mostly on the coast, which means that this period was inevitably going to feature a relentless tide of Republican votes stacking up as the poll closings sweep through the middle of America. Buck up, my little chickadees; your states are coming.

EMAIL FROM A BUSH OPERATIVE: “We are feeling very confident about Florida. So are people on the ground there, who know a good deal about these things.” He adds:

Let me make a broader, and very significant, point. The media are now changing the models they are using to estimate where things stand. The actual votes underscored how flawed the exit polling data was – and so the media are making adjustments in where things stand. What does that specifically mean: The final exit polls had us down by five to six points in Wisconsin; the estimates now are that we are even. The exit polls had us down three points in Iowa; the estimates now are that we are even. The exit polls had us down in New Mexico; the estimates now are that we are even.

We’ll know soon enough. I hope!