Yesterday I talked about how it could happen.

Today it’s a reality.

From Omaha World-Herald:

The Democratic presidential candidate claimed an electoral vote in the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District — the first time in more than four decades a Democrat won any of Nebraska’s electoral votes.

The Omaha World-Herald is calling the race after Obama won 8,434 out of 15,039 early votes that arrived too late to be included in Tuesday’s results. They were counted today by Douglas County election officials.

Those ballots give Obama a 1,260-vote lead over Republican John McCain in the 2nd District.

It also added one more electoral vote to Obama’s win over McCain in Tuesday’s election. The electoral count now stands: Obama, 365, McCain, 162.

Who would have thunk it?

So that makes 9 red states and 1 red district flipped from 2004 to 2008.

Missouri is the only state that hasn’t been called yet, and we may not know until next week because it’ll probably take a lot of time to count all of those absentee and provisional ballots. Still, with McCain up almost 6,000 votes right now, I think this one is close to being called for McCain.

More as it develops…

That’s right. Obama may actually win Omaha.

So if this happens, and you accept that Obama won North Carolina and Missouri will eventually go for McCain, then the electoral count will look like this…

Obama: 365
McCain: 173

More from Omaha World-Herald:

His odds of bagging an electoral vote in Nebraska grew stronger this morning, with word that 10,000 to 12,000 early ballots and 5,200 provisional ballots are left to count in Douglas County.

Obama won about 61 percent of the early votes counted before Tuesday’s election. If that percentage holds with the early ballots left to count, Obama stands a strong chance of winning the Omaha-area 2nd Congressional District.

Republicans did not concede defeat this morning, but they acknowledged the long odds. John McCain held a 569-vote lead over Obama in the 2nd District at the end of Tuesday.

Are the demographics of this country changing so significantly that Obama can win electoral votes in Omaha?

If so…the Republicans may be wandering in the desert a lot longer than they think.

Welcome to the Donklephant 2008 Electoral College results coverage.

I’ll be constantly updating this post as new results come in, so please watch the numbers as well as the updates below the numbers.

Total Electoral Votes
Obama: 216
McCain: 129

Full numbers below!

• Alabama (9): D – 0%, R – 0% (McCain Wins)
• Alaska (3): D – 0%, R – 0%
• Arkansas (6): D – 0%, R – 0% (McCain Wins)
• Arizona (10): D – 0%, R – 0%
• California (55): D – 0%, R – 0%
• Colorado (9): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• Connecticut (7): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• Delaware (3): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• D.C. (3): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• Florida (27): D – 0%, R – 0%
• Georgia (15): D – 0%, R – 0% (McCain Wins)
• Hawaii (4): D – 0%, R – 0%
• Idaho (4): D – 0%, R – 0%
• Illinois (21): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• Indiana (11): D – 0%, R – 0%
• Iowa (7): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• Kansas (6): D – 0%, R – 0% (McCain Wins)
• Kentucky (8): D – 0%, R – 0% (McCain Wins)
• Louisiana (9): D – 0%, R – 0% (McCain Wins)
• Maine (4): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• Maryland (10): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• Massachusetts (12): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• Michigan (17): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• Minnesota (10): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• Mississippi (6): D – 0%, R – 0%
• Missouri (11): D – 0%, R – 0%
• Montana (3): D – 0%, R – 0%
• Nebraska (5): D – 0%, R – 0%
• Nevada (5): D – 0%, R – 0%
• New Hampshire (4): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• New Jersey (15): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• New Mexico (5): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• New York (31): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• North Carolina (15): D – 0%, R – 0%
• North Dakota (3): D – 0%, R – 0% (McCain Wins)
• Ohio (20): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• Oklahoma (7): D – 0%, R – 0% (McCain Wins)
• Oregon (7): D – 0%, R – 0%
• Pennsylvania (21): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• Rhode Island (4): D – 0%, R – 0% (McCain Wins)
• South Carolina (8): D – 0%, R – 0% (McCain Wins)
• South Dakota (3): D – 0%, R – 0%
• Tennessee (11): D – 0%, R – 0% (McCain Wins)
• Texas (34): D – 0%, R – 0% (McCain Wins)
• Utah (5): D – 0%, R – 0% (McCain Wins)
• Vermont (3): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• Virginia (13): D – 0%, R – 0%
• Washington (11): D – 0%, R – 0%
• West Virginia (5): D – 0%, R – 0% (McCain Wins)
• Wisconsin (10): D – 0%, R – 0% (Obama Wins)
• Wyoming (3): D – 0%, R – 0% (McCain Wins)

————-
10:25 PM
McCain wins Louisiana.

10:16 PM
Obama wins Colorado.

9:59 PM
Obama wins Ohio and New Mexico. It’s over.

Oh, and McCain wins Texas and Utah. But it doesn’t matter.

9:10 PM
McCain wins Arkansas, Wyoming, Kansas and North Dakota for a total of 18 electoral votes.

9:03 PM
Obama wins in Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and New York for a total of 79 electoral votes.

8:39 PM
McCain picks up Alabama and Georgia.

Florida exit polling is favoring Obama.

8:15 PM
Obama wins Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Illinois, Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland.

McCain wins Tennessee, Oklahoma and West Virginia.

7:49 PM
McCain picks up South Carolina’s 8 electoral votes.

7:37 PM
Obama wins D.C.

He’s also doing well in exit polling in Indiana and Virginia.

7:04 PM
McCain wins Kentucky.

Obama wins Vermont.

Indiana is too close to call so far.

By the way, if you don’t know when polls close in your state, check out our post with ALL the closing times.

And get out there and vote!

Why?

Because there’s no way they’ll match history…

With the final national polls settling around Obama +7, I realized that I lacked a good sense of historical context for that number. Turns out it’s about the margin of George H.W. Bush’s 1988 win against Michael Dukakis: 53.4% to 45.6%.

That’s certainly impressive. It doesn’t, however, really compare to Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide against Walter Mondale. That sucker was 18 points — 58.8% to 40.6%. Incredible. (Reagan beat Carter in 1980 by nearly 10 points.) And it turns out that both LBJ and Richard Nixon (in ‘72) won by roughly 23 points. Times have changed, eh?

Still, if Obama can pull out some surprises (like Georgia, Montana or North Dakota), there’s no doubt that people will be saying that word come tomorrow.

Electoral-Vote.com: Obama 353, McCain 185

FiveThirtyEight: Obama 340.2, McCain 197.8

Pollster: Obama 311, McCain 142, Tied 85


So then…

There’s really no good news for McCain in these maps and even some crazy last minute ploy will probably have no effect as voters’ minds are made up at this point. They’re voting for a candidate for a variety of reasons and there simply aren’t enough undecideds to swing this way back for McCain.

That’s simply not going to happen.

Here’s more from the Todd…

BTW, South Carolina? Did Todd actually tell us to keep an eye on South Carolina?

Gee, sounds familiar…

Does McCain really think he can get all of these swing states? Will undecideds turn this significantly against Obama?

We shall see…

Note that it’s more likely that Obama will win North Dakota than Florida. Pretty crazy.

My guess on Tuesday is that if voters are still undecided at this point they’ll break for McCain because they’re essentially okay with Bush’s 8 years and McCain would clearly be an extension of that.

So…what does that mean as far as the swing states go?

Any state where Obama is below 50% is up certainly up for grabs. That means all of the toss-ups in yellow and Ohio. So my gut tells me McCain will eek out wins in all of these states.

What do you think?

And he has a 13 point lead among likely voters.

The details…

(CBS) With just three days left until Election Day, a new CBS News poll finds that the Democratic presidential ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden leads its Republican counterpart by 13 points among likely voters, 54% to 41%. That margin reflects an increase of two points in the Obama-Biden ticket’s lead from a CBS News/New York Times poll released Thursday.

About one in five voters say they have already cast their vote, either in person or through the mail, and these early voters prefer the Democratic ticket by an even greater margin. Obama leads among early voters 57% to 38%, a nineteen point advantage.

To give you an indication of how significant this is, in 2004 the numbers shook out like this…

Early voters who also voted four years ago backed Democratic nominee John Kerry over President George W. Bush 45% to 40%.

Can McCain still turn it around? Well, I’m with Charlie Cook on this one.

In short, no.

In fact, it’s so grim that he essentially says that if McCain wins, nobody should trust him anymore. Pretty bold, but I have the same feelings. I know people have been hemming and hawing about the fact that “anything” could happen, but nobody has provided any sort of reality to back that up.

In any event…check out this clip…

Also, check out the map over at Cook’s website, which is different than MSNBC’s…

Pretty stunning, no?

According to Cook, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Georgia are in the toss up column.

As I’ve said many times in the past, I don’t think any of these will turn blue this season, but if they do it’ll be devastating for the Republican party and would probably signal a 60 seat supermajority in the Senate.

My friend and colleague, Lagan Sebert, and I have just published a follow-up on the voting situation in Pennsylvania, arrowing in on a recent legal battle over paper ballots and the Philadelphia City Commission (which has kind of become a peculiar little beat for the ANP, I guess.)

This week, we attended the federal hearing against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (filed by the NAACP) and the last public meeting of the Philly City Commissioners before the election. We were surprised to see very few members of media at either meeting–Bob Warner of the Philadelphia Daily News was an exception.

If you like it, please do send this along to other people who might be interested or link to it or embed it on your websites! All ANP content is free for use in newspapers, blogs, television, and radio.

Chaos Looms Over Pennsylvania Vote
By Danielle Ivory on Oct 31, 2008

Philadelphia is shaping up to be a key city in a key battleground state in this election, but machine problems and long lines may plague the polling stations and voter disenfranchisement will be a serious risk. Unfortunately for voters, the people charged with running a smooth election in Philly seem surprisingly unconcerned. Philly’s veritable election czar, Marge Tartaglione (D), in particular, shocked ANP with her comments at a recent hearing. See more videos at the American News Project.

ANP has been investigating the perplexing case of the Philadelphia City Commission for a few weeks.

Click for our original story, Philly Official Scoffs at Voting Problems.

Click for our follow-up, Voters Sue Pennsylvania, Election Official Scoffs.

And click for the judge’s recent ruling in the case of the NAACP v. Cortes.

Follow Danielle’s reporting on twitter.

Follow Lagan’s reporting on twitter.

And here’s more…

So yes, it’s not looking good for McCain right now. Especially if Virginia goes for Obama early in the evening.

More as it develops…

I think Barr could make a big difference in Georgia and other traditional red states like North Carolina, Indiana, Florida and Ohio.

Here’s why…

Reports show 1 million Democrats have early voted in North Carolina, compared to half a million Republicans. 1.4 million people have early voted in Georgia, and African American is around 33%. And in Florida, the African American and elderly vote is having a big effect as 1.4 million votes have been cast, 54% by Democrats and 30% by Republicans. That’s significant because Dems only make up 42% of registered voters and Repubs make up 36%.

Long story short, McCain needs all the help he can get and if Barr can siphon off just 2% of the vote in these states, he’ll most likely be taking votes away from McCain and could possibly usher in an Obama landslide of up to 375 electoral votes.

More as it develops…

Can’t wait to tune in and see if Silver’s models were accurate or not.

Long story short…it’ll be incredibly tough.

Looks like Obama’s ground game is really working.



One thing I would note about those places where Democrats and Republicans are neck and neck…Republicans ALWAYS dominate early voting across the country. So even if Dems are tied in some of these battlegrounds, that ultimately favors them.

More as it develops…

Basically, Todd hedges his bets, but Cook comes straight out and says, “Boy, it sure as hell looks over.”



And to that point about early voting, here’s more from WSJ…

Almost 11 million voters already have cast ballots in the 2008 elections, and Democrats seem to have cast the majority of them, according to incomplete information compiled by George Mason University Professor Michael McDonald.

McDonald’s Web site, which he says he will update continuously between now and Election Day, reports that 2.1 million Florida voters have cast early ballots, with registered Democrats casting 45% of them, Republicans casting 40% and independents casting 15%.

Likewise, registered Democrats account for 55% of the 97,000 ballots already cast in New Mexico; 55% of 1.2 million ballots cast in North Carolina and 50.1% of 300,000 cast in Iowa. Registered Republicans cast less than one-third of the ballots in those three states.

In Nevada, registered Democrats accounted for 55% of 211,000 votes already cast in Clark County and 52% of 51,000 cast in Washoe County, the state’s two large population centers.

In Colorado, registered Democrats account for 39% of the early votes, Republicans account for 38% and independents for 23%.

Personally, I think it’s over.

That’s big.

More as it develops…