EXIT POLLS A number of people have emailed to point out that the samples in individual precincts are small. That’s true, but the overall sample is large, and it went awry on every level: in each state and in the national vote. Sure, it was a close race, but as far as I can tell, the errors all ran one way: towards Kerry. Rumour has it that the reason the networks were so slow to call the Carolinas is that the exit polls showed them going for Kerry, a nonsense result in light of the result, and even in light of previous polling.

Perhaps people were ashamed to tell exit pollsters they’d voted for Bush; I would have been leery of doing so in my polling place, which resembled a Kerry campaign rally. Or perhaps there’s some sort of systematic bias in the results, starting with the abnormal number of women sampled: are women more likely to respond? Did the exit polls oversample former swing districts, when increased turnout in “lock” districts seemed to be the key to the race? I don’t know, but I hope someone’s finding out.

DID ANYONE ELSE NOTICE Dick Cheney claiming a “mandate” for Bush? That undoubtedly set off a lot of bells in liberal heads.

I too am worried about what Matthew Yglesias calls “Bush Unleashed“, at least so far as spending and social legislation goes. Democratic hopes that Bush would somehow be compelled to govern like a Democrat, for no clear reason that I can see, were always destined to be dashed, but the pickups in the house and Senate mean he’ll have a freer hand than I was expecting when I endorsed him.

On the other hand, there’s that gaping deficit, which will limit his freedom of action considerably, and entitlement reform is looming overhead. I think the biggest place where he’ll try to claim that “mandate” will be the supreme court, and I think he’ll probably succeed — the Democratic filibusters seem to me to be a successful tactic only because 99% of the public is unaware of them, which wouldn’t be true if it were a supreme court justice. Moreover, there’s likely to be severe illness on the court, with all the over-80 justices, and that may well mean a vacancy which will put heavy pressure on the Dems to pass whomever the president nominates. I’d guess Bush gets to put in at least two justices who are fairly conservative.

WELCOME TO THE 2008 CAMPAIGN Trad sports is already looking ahead to 2008, for those who can’t wait for the mayhem to begin. Meanwhile, Coyote Blog points out that 2008 will be the first election in more than fifty years in which neither candidate is an incumbent president or VP.

BEFORE I GO TO BED, THOUGH, the question of the night is “What the hell happened with the exit polls?” They wildly overstated Kerry’s margins. Some weird systematic error in the sample collection? Biased pollers? Sheer bad luck? I hope someone takes on these questions over the next couple days.

FINALLY FILED; I’ll be off to bed in a minute. As of now, Bush’s lead seems to be widening in Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico, and Ohio seems like a real stretch for Kerry. Colour me shocked; I’ve been predicting it for Kerry for weeks now, and loudly proclaimed the race over around 3:00 this afternoon. I’d certainly never have predicted such a solid Bush lead with record turnout. Conventional wisdom, thy name is dust.

More after I get some shuteye. But just in case you were wondering, I have indeed been blogging in my pajamas these last few hours. And mighty comfortable they are, too.

NBC JUST REPORTED THAT KERRY WON’T CONCEDE TONIGHT. They’re hanging onto the slim hope of Ohio’s few remaining votes. The networks are standing by their projections, but hey, it’s not like the projections haven’t been wrong before.

Update I’m watching John Edwards’ speech saying that they will “fight for every vote”. He’s good. I expect we’ll see him in the presidential race again.

Update II NBC is talking to bloggers, following an interview with Rudy Giuliani in which he argued (to my 100% agreement) that the country really doesn’t need another 30 days of litigation. I’m wondering about all this coverage — who’s still up watching it? I have to be; it’s my job to watch it. But are ordinary citizens still awake right now?

YOU’RE GETTING SLEEPY I have to stay up until the networks call it in order to file my story. At this point, I find it hard to imagine how Kerry can pull it out in Ohio, but then, last time I went to sleep thinking Bush had won, and woke up to the Florida mess.

Quite apart from my own vote preference, I hope Bush wins it, because it looks like Bush is going to win the popular vote, adn I think it will be good for the country for the popular vote to line up with the electoral.

In other news, Drudge is reporting 120 million voters turned out. If Bush wins, what will the “selected, not elected” crowd do for a sound byte now?

THINGS ARE LOOKING BAD FOR TOM DASCHLE IN SOUTH DAKOTA. I confess I don’t understand the obsession that led to pouring $25 million into the state to defeat a rather moderate minority leader, but this will be a big scalp for the Republicans.

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.

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.

CNN NOW PUTS ALL FIVE OF NEBRASKA’S ELECTORAL VOTES IN THE BUSH BASKET, up from four earlier.

CNN HAS JIM DEMINT LEADING IN SOUTH CAROLINA with 44% of the vote in, which is terrific news for free trade. If a highly protectionist state like South Carolina can put a staunch free-trader like DeMint into the Senate, there’s hope for us all.

ABC CALLS IT FOR COBURN, the Oklahoma Republican senatorial candidate who is most famous for his bizarre claims that lesbianism was so rampant in some southeastern Oklahoma public schools that they would only let the girls go to the bathroom one at a time.

CNN shows Colorado’s Amendment 36, the ballot initiative to split the state’s electoral votes, losing handily. That’s one lawsuit dodged, anyway.

ABC HAS MAINE PUTTING 3 ELECTORAL VOTES INTO THE KERRY COLUMN but the fourth is still too close to call — a great sign for Bush, as he wasn’t expected to pull this out. So far no states have switched parties, but I’d love to know the margins.

WHAT DO THE MARKETS SAY? Since this afternoon, Bush has gotten the crap whacked out of him; he’s down to 25% on Tradesports. Might be an attractive time to buy, since Drudge has the Ohio exit polls tightening.

(Full disclosure: I’m not allowed to bet on the election on Tradesports, any more than I can buy a stock I write about. So this advice is all being given by someone who isn’t putting any money on it.)

WHAT DO THE EXIT POLLS MEAN? If you’re a news junkie like me, you’ve probably seen the exit poll results showing Kerry up in battleground states. The trend is definitely Kerry, but in the key states, the margin is small, meaning that Florida and Ohio could easily swing Bush, throwing him the election. So Republicans, don’t despair; Democrats, don’t break out your party hats just yet. And if you want your guy to win, then GO VOTE, because there’s still a very good chance he can.