Nate pushes back on the graph I (and everyone else) posted earlier:

Likewise, there was more wave-to-wave variation in the Ahmadinejad-Moosavi results than the statistical analysis I cited above seems to imply. Ignoring votes for minor candidates, Ahmadinejad won a high of 70.4 percent of the votes in Wave 1, and a low of 62.3 percent in the votes newly added in Wave 6. By comparison, Obama’s share of the newly-added votes in our experiment ranged from 56.4 percent in Wave 3 to 44.7 percent in Wave 4. That’s slightly more variance than we saw in the Iranian results but not much.

To be clear, these results certainly do not prove that Iran’s election was clean. I have no particular reason to believe the results reported by the Interior Ministry. But I also don’t have any particular reason to disbelieve them, at least based on the statistical evidence. If Moosavi truly did have the support of a majority of Iran’s citizenry, the best evidence we will have of that is what happens in the streets of Tehran over the next days and weeks.

Some are taking issue with his analysis, saying that he essentially chose states at random for his US analogy, whereas the Iranian votes came in regionally.  This would be more like Obama winning 57% of the vote in the South, as well as 57% in the Northeast.  This doesn’t happen.

Finally, Ahmadinejad supposedly won Tehran with over 50% of the vote. (?!?!)  And even more ridiculous, he won Tabriz with 57% of the vote, which is the home of Moussavi’s own ethnic group (Azeri).

This was rigged.

As more and more news trickles out of Iran, the picture looks more violent.

Videos and pictures are starting to come out showing police beating protesters.

There are conflicting reports that Moussavi has been arrested.

There’s an early report that Iran’s Election Commision has declared the vote a fraud and are requesting a do-over.

There’s apparently an open letter from employees of the Interior Ministry claiming manipulation of votes.

There’s one blog report that 50-100 people are dead.

Meanwhile, CNN is covering the digital television transition and the 25th anniversary of Tetris. MSM ftw.

UPDATE:

You know, I was thinking after I posted this.  Thank god for Facebook and Twitter.  People laugh and joke about these apps, claiming they’re some sort of useless medium to express our own narcissism, but without these things we’d have no information about what’s happening on the ground.  Journalists and camera crews are being locked down, so the only source that we have is the occasional text message that slips through to twitter, or the camera phone video that gets uploaded to facebook.

This revolution will not be televised, but it will be twittered.

UPDATE II:

Sullivan steals my line.

Here I thought things couldn’t get any worse in Israel:

Winter arrived in Israel, literally and politically, on Tuesday. After months of a warm and rainless false spring, the tempests finally arrived on Election Day, as if an overly romantic cinematographer had waited for wild gusts and thunder before lining up the extras at the polling places and letting the cameras roll. [...]

The worst news, however, is that ultra-rightist Avigdor Lieberman and his Israel Is Our Home party have won 15 Knesset seats. Lieberman is a blustering, bellicose figure in the mold of the European radical right. His platform focuses on disenfranchising Israel’s Arab citizens, whom he decries as a fifth column. Lieberman’s ascendancy threatens to transform the external Israeli-Arab conflict into an internal ethnic struggle between the Jewish majority and Arab minority. [...]

A central plank of Lieberman’s platform is conditioning full citizenship on an oath of loyalty to the state, the flag, and the national anthem. Since Arab citizens are unhappy with the flag, featuring a Jewish star, and with the anthem, which speaks of the “Jewish soul,” the obvious goal is to make them decline the oath and lose the right to vote. Lieberman also rails against weak government. His party has proposed a “reform” that would allow the prime minister to appoint Cabinet members without parliamentary approval. During a state of emergency, the Cabinet or even the prime minister alone would be able to enact regulations superseding laws. It’s a blueprint for one-man rule.

Lieberman’s foreign policy is equally strident. In an interview with me in 2006, he described Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians as being one front in the conflict of civilizations. Against Iran, he said, neither diplomacy nor nuclear deterrence would work. “Anyone who draws the lessons from Hitler’s rise [knows Hitler] was telling the truth, and Ahmadinejad is telling the truth,” he said, referring to the Iranian president’s threats against Israel. “All attempts to pacify Hitler ended in World War II, and all attempts to appease Ahmadinejad are doomed to failure.” The unstated implication was that Israel will need to resort to force to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

Given his party’s strength, Lieberman will demand a senior position in the Cabinet regardless of who becomes prime minister. Wherever one imagines him — as defense minister controlling day-to-day policy in the occupied territories, as finance minister cutting funds for Arab communities, as housing minister able to increase construction in settlements — the vision is frightening. Whatever position he receives, his party’s contingent in the Cabinet will press for hard-line policies. By competing for Lieberman’s support in their fight with each other, Livni and Netanyahu put their desire to win over their country’s future. In the aftermath of the election, it seems that the storm has only begun.

A racist in the cabinet.  That’ll probably work out well…

(BTW, what’s with all these dicks named Lieberman?  Anybody know any decent guys out there named Lieberman?  I’d hate to start a stereotype, but…)

Aren’t actually holograms at all.

The CNN anchors were not really speaking to three-dimensional projected images, but rather empty space, Kreuzer said. The images were simply added to what viewers saw on their screens at home, in much the same way computer-generated special effects are added to movies.

Kreuzer said the images were tomograms, which are images that are captured from all sides, reconstructed by computers, then displayed on screen.

Holograms, on the other hand, are projected into space.

CNN officials could not be reached for comment.

Depending on the outcome of several close races (Franken in Minn, Alaska, etc), it is still possible for the Dems to obtain a 60-seat majority in the Senate…

But that 60-seat majority would have to contain a certain Independant Senator from Connecticut.

Ugh. 

DAMN YOU ELMER FUDD.

BLin: 8:22 PST – just got back from the hotel bar, and when president elect obama came on the screen, there was an out burst of applause.  i haven’t stopped smiling in 24 minutes.

BLin: 6:58 PST – wtf, AZ? no results in an hour.  i’m ashamed.

BLin: 6:54 PST – Obama takes the lead in VA.  He likely will not relinquish it the rest of the night, as all the votes out are in NoVa.  Juice the Blog Calls VA for Obama.

BLin: 6:36 PST – OHIO! OHIO! hahaha OHIO! It’s over! Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.  WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

BLin: 6:19 PST – McConnell wins in KY.  Peace out 60 D’s.  Oh well.

BLin: 6:12 PST – shoot.  we lost GA.  oh well.  174-64, good guys.

BLin: 6:00 PST – New score 174-49, good guys.  96 EVs to go.

BLin: 5:51 PST – Look for CO to get called at the top of the hour, a big part of the state voted early.  If this happens, pop your corks and start practicing “President Obama”.

BLin: 5:42 PST – Score is now 102-34, good guys.

BLin: 5:40 PST – HAHA!!! WOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOO!!!!  CNN calls PA for O!  We’re gonna do it.

BLin: 5:28 PST – AP calls NH.  This is a great indicator.  We’re gonna win.

BLin: 5:26 PST – Hagan wins in NC, as well as Sununu Shaheen in NH, and Warner in VA.  That’s 3 D pick-ups so far…

BLin: 5:19 PST – FL is still looking really good.  We might be headed for good night…

BLin: 5:08 PST – WHOA!! MSNBC just called PA for O!!  We’ll see if/when the other orgs follow…i don’t trust it unless CNN calls it, they are the most conservative

BLin: 5:03 PST – PA exit poll shows D +9 on party ID, and 90-9 split among D’s for O.  This looks good.

BLin: 5:00 PST – Boom.  77-34, good guys.

BLin: 4:56 PST – SC for M.  3-16, bad guys.

BLin: 4:52 PST – coming up, a whole bunch of quick calls: CT (O), DE (O), DC (O), IL (O), ME (O), MD (O), MA (O), AL (M), TN (M), TX (M), OK (M), and prob MI (O).  Then there’s NH, NJ, PA, MO, MS, and SD.  Whew.

BLin: 4:39 PST – RE: Virginia, stop worrying, NoVa isn’t in yet.  right now only appalachia (or “Real” virginia is in).

BLin: 4:33 PST – remember this guy?

“Let me tell you, when all the votes are counted, when Gary comes in, I think you’re looking at something for the world to see,” Clay, an Obama supporter, said in a telephone interview from Obama’s Gary headquarters. “I don’t know what the numbers are yet, but Gary has absolutely produced in large numbers for Obama here.”

yeah…i’m waiting for lake county, fo’ sho’.

BLin: 4:29 PST – up next, OH, NC, WV, none should be called…and they aren’t.  this is good.

BLin: 4:19 PST – just to put this in perspective a little, Bush won IN by 21 pts in 2004.  Tonight, with 9% reporting, it’s too close to call.

BLin: 4:15 PST – Holy shit.  Turn to CNN right now, they have Jessica Yellin in holograph form, star-wars-emperor-style

BLin: 4:03 PST – GA exit poll shows 30% AA.  Could be enough to turn GA blue…

BLin: 4:00 PST – as expected, CNN calls VT for O, and KY for M.  3-8, bad guys.

BLin: 3:47 PST – still looking good in IN with 2% reporting.  we got some interesting states coming up at the top of the hour.  some quick calls: KY (M), VT (O), and prob SC (M).  But FL, GA, VA, and IN should take some time to call.  Keep an eye on the delta between Martin’s vote and Obama’s vote in GA…

BLin: 3:28 PST – finally, O out to an early IN lead

BLin: 3:24 PST – still no IN results…you’re killin me indiana.

BLin: 3:12 PST – neck and neck so far in KY senate race…

BLin: 2:48 PST (did i mention i’m in san jose right now? well i am.) – first up, (most of) Indiana and (most of) Kentucky.

See, I was going to act all cool tonight and write up an hour-by-hour election night guide for tomorrow, but Nate Silver just had to go and do it before I did.  Oh well, his is better than mine would be anyway…here’s the most important part:

7 PM EST. Polls close in Virginia and Georgia, as well as most of Florida and most of New Hampshire.

Virginia, for my money, is the most important state in this election. If John McCain loses it, his path to victory is exceptionally narrow—he would need to pull out an upset in Pennsylvania, while holding on to Florida and Ohio, and avoiding a sweep out West. Barack Obama has considerably more ways to win without Virginia, but a failure to close out the state would suggest at best a more circuitous route to victory. As Obama remains about five points ahead in most polls of Virginia, what we’re really looking for is a quick call on anything before 8 PM that would indicate that the map has indeed changed from 2004, and not in McCain’s favor.

Georgia and New Hampshire are a bit less essential electorally, but they may tell us the most about whether the polls are off in this election. If there’s one state where Obama is likely to overperform his polls, it’s in Georgia, where 35 percent of early voters are African-American, and where almost 30 percent of them did not vote in 2004. These are the sorts of voters that may erroneously be screened out by “likely voter” models that rely on past voting history. Obama could not only carry the state, but he might help boost Jim Martin to victory in the U.S. Senate race there—giving the Democrats a plausible path to a 60-seat caucus.

On the other hand, if there is any state where the polls might overestimate Obama’s numbers, it’s in New Hampshire, where nearly the entirely electorate is white and where Obama was famously upset by Hillary Clinton during the primaries. If McCain holds Obama to within about five points in New Hampshire—closer than any current polls—we may need to be worried about some sort of Bradley Effect.

A couple things I’ll add is (not that exit polls are all that great) but one thing I’ll be looking for is a party ID shift in PA.  Party ID split in PA in 2004 was D 41/ R 39 / I 20.  A new split with significantly more D’s would be a good sign, as McCain’s campaign has been hoping that party ID will snap back to 2004 levels.  Also, watch Philadelphia and the Philly suburbs.  Obama really needs to run up the numbers in Philadelphia county, and post good numbers in Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware and Chester counties.  Kerry won Philly by 412,000 votes, and barely won the suburbs.  PA is key; it makes the road to 270 infinitely smoother with PA in our column.

In VA, watch NoVa.  If Obama can crush in the DC suburbs, then things are looking real good.  If he’s not getting killed in western VA, than things are looking really, really good.

Nate mentions this, but (if the race hasn’t been called yet) really watch Washoe county in Nevada.  If Obama can win this county and really run up the numbers in Clark county, he’s going to win Nevada and the election.

And, if you want the quick and dirty version, remember Nate’s shorthand:

That leaves our five states in play. The victory conditions for Obama involving these five states proceed something as follows:

1. Win Pennsylvania and ANY ONE of Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, or Nevada*
2. Win Ohio and EITHER Colorado OR Virginia.
3. Win Colorado AND Virginia AND Nevada.

(* Nevada produces a 269-269 tie, which would probably be resolved for Obama in the House of Represenatives.)

Now, suppose you think that Colorado is already in the bag for Obama because of his large edge in early voting there. We can then simplify the victory conditions as follows:

1. Win Pennsylvania
2. Win Ohio
3. Win Virginia AND Nevada

That’s basically what it comes down to, although I’m sure each campaign would claim that there are a larger number of states in play.

Oh, and make sure you check out the dKos scoreboard.  It looks like it’ll be real sweet.

Update:

Holy crap.  Talk about a guide.  Here’s dKos’s election night guide (and here it is in pdf form).  Looks like I got some reading to do tonight…

I think one of the most foolish fights that we, as Americans, get into is the quadrennial fight over who’s committing “voter fraud” and who’s committing “voter suppression.”  You see, this is really a microcosm of the two competing ideologies in this country: one side is concerned about someone cheating, the other is concerned about someone getting screwed.  In both cases, the believer thinks that someone’s freedom is at stake.  But the unique thing about this problem is that it can be solved with relatively little bickering over the solution.  And this solution is an affirmative, or automatic, voter registration that is performed solely by the federal government (in cooperation with other agencies).

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Here’s a little supplement to my previous post.  The McCain campaign has made it very clear that victory runs through PA.  So in the spirit of understanding their thought process I used DailyKos’s beta version of their electoral scoreboard, which looks like it’s going to be really sweet come Tuesday.  Here it is:

I made this by flipping PA red, and then sequentially flipping states in order of their Pollster.com averages until McCain hit 270.  Here’s the list of states and their margins, that McCain has to win on Tuesday in order to be successful withe his PA strategy:  MT (M +3.3), GA (M +2.2), IN (M +0.6), NC (O +1.8), MO (O +1.9), FL (O +2.7), ND (O +3.1), NV (O +5.9), OH (O +6.3), PA (O +9.3).

That’s a full blown sweep of the current toss-up states, as well as what would be a few surprising pick-ups in NV and OH.  But the most surprising element of all would be the keystone (haha) of this entire strategy: PA.

McCain has not led there pretty much ever. And the trend is by no means moving swiftly enough in his direction. Let’s call this what it is: a hail mary.

I’m not talking about their lack of reporters, statisticians, pundits, or fancy touch-screen graphics.  I’m talking about the very real possibility of a landslide on Tuesday.  I like to spend a little bit of time on the weekends watching cable news, just to catch a whiff of the narrative.  And the narrative these days is, “What the heck is Obama doing campaigning in all these red states, and even running ads in Arizona, when this election is so close?”  Y’all already know the answer to this, because your jobs don’t depend on the fact that people remained interested in the horse race.  But just to recap, here’s where we are:

Fivethirtyeight

Pollster.com

RCP

John McCain has very real problems.  Barack Obama’s fivethirtyeight landslide percentage (>375 EV) is currently at 38.5%.  So basically, the only argument you could make in order to convince someone that this race is close is if the polls in a large portion of the United States are completely and utterly wrong, which does have a small possibility of being right.  But then you throw this into the mix:

These ground campaigns do not bear any relationship to one another. One side has something in the neighborhood of five million volunteers all assigned to very clear and specific pieces of the operation, and the other seems to have something like a thousand volunteers scattered throughout the country. Jon Tester’s 2006 Senate race in Montana had more volunteers — by a mile — than John McCain’s 2006 presidential campaign.

And then there’s this:

** In NV,  43% of Democrats who have voted early are new or sporadic voting Democrats

** In NC, 19% of Democrats who’ve voted early are Democrats who’ve never voted in a presidential election before

** Says Plouffe: “We are going much better with Hispanic voters in Florida than certainly was the case in 2004 and we believe in 2000. Puerto Rican voters, Columbian voters, and doing surprisinglky well with younger Cuban voters.”

** “In Florida, a quarter of sporadic voting Democrats are turning out out that the same rate as very likely Democrats.”

Democrats are currently outnumbering Republicans in early voting in Florida by 250,000 votes.  In 2004, early voting in Florida ended with a 40,000 vote Republican advantage.  Democrats are also banking a solid majority of votes in Washoe county in Nevada, a county that voted Bush in 2004.

And finally, a little perspective for good measure:

I know it’s a little scary to be a Democrat and actually be winning, and I’m also aware of the track record we have as a party to blow it in the end.  But I have to say, the evidence is overwhelming.  Now, this doesn’t mean we should just sit back and not do anything and coast across the line, but I just want y’all to be prepared for the party on November 4th.  It’s gonna be rockin’.

This one is like clockwork.  It’s the oldest trick in the book, and it comes out every election cycle.  From a phony flyer in Virginia:

Due to the larger than expected voter turnout in this years [sic] electoral process, An [sic] emergency session of the General Assembly has adopted the following emergency regulations to ease the load on local electorial [sic] precincts and ensure a fair electorial [sic] process.

All Democratic party supporters and independent voters supporting Democratic candidates shall vote on November 5th as adopted by emergency regulation of the Virginia General Assembly.

All Republican party supporters and independent voters supporting Republican candidates shall vote on November 4th as precribed [sic] by law.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause but felt this was the only way to ensure fairness to the complete electorial [sic] process.

These kind of tactics are exactly the reason candidates started listing the election date in their ads (in fact, if I remember right, Obama was somewhat of a pioneer in this regard).

I was at a bakery today doing some cake testing for my wedding, and they had these cookies with Obama / McCain on them. The baker went on to tell me that they are participating in an unscientific poll for the 2008 presidential election by selling cookies with the candidates on them. For every cookie purchased, they are counting that as 1 vote for that candidate.

While we were in there some lady walked in and purchased 4 McCain cookies. It was officially on at that point.

I’ll try and post the final results in the next couple of weeks.

From Politico:

John McCain is pulling out of Michigan, according to two Republicans, a stunning move a month away from Election Day that indicates the difficulty Republicans are having in finding blue states to put in play.

McCain will go off TV in Michigan, stop dropping mail there and send most of his staff to more competitive states, including Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida. Wisconsin went for Kerry in 2004, Ohio and Florida for Bush.

McCain’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Details at 538.