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Archive for the 'Election Night' Category

Orange You Glad It’s Election Day?

Published by William Beutler on November 4, 2008 in Barack Obama, Charts and Graphs, Election Night, Elections, Joe Biden, John McCain, New Media Strategies, Sarah Palin, Trend Tool, Twitter, White House '08 and William Beutler. 2 Comments

Well folks, this is it. After two years of the longest presidential campaign ever — and one hopes it can’t get any longer — the polls are open and people are standing in line all across America. Or, given the early hour, all across the Eastern time zone. And this time around people are doing something they couldn’t the last: posting their thoughts to Twitter via mobile device.

Why do I bring all this up? Because New Media Strategies (where I work and whence I type) has teamed up with Tropicana (the orange juice makers, not the casino resort) to create a Twitter-focused data visualization tool that we’re calling Fresh Squeezed Election Tweets, and just went live a few moments ago at www.anorangeamerica.com:

The site is continuously collecting tweets using the words “Obama” and “McCain”, counting up which other words appear with them — Vote, Election, Country — and other words that appear frequently — Bush, War, Lie (no one said Twitter was fair and balanced) — and representing this frequency by the size of the associated blue-red bubble. The bluer it is, the closer-aligned the keyword is with Obama; the more red, the more it’s McCain. And see the black lines connecting? Those show you which words are used together most: if you mouseover the keywords, you’ll get actual percentages. Did I mention it’s embeddable? I don’t think I did. Here, let me: It’s embeddable.

Is that cool, or what? Feel free to use it in your own posts and check back throughout the day, as the data set changes and perhaps reveals some insight into the day’s events. We might already have a pretty good idea who will be president-elect by day’s end, but Freshly Squeezed Election Tweets may help give a better idea why.

The Tale of the E-mail

Published by William Beutler on May 7, 2008 in Barack Obama, Democrats, E-mail, Election Night, Hillary Clinton, White House '08 and William Beutler. 2 Comments

I’m not sure if interesting juxtapositions will be a trend here at Blog P.I., but here’s another: this time, the tell-tale campaign e-mails from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, sent out in the early morning hours.

From Team HRC, arriving in my inbox at 12:26 a.m.:

Hillary Clinton’s post Indiana and North Carolina campaign e-mail

Tonight’s victory in Indiana was close, and a margin that narrow means just one thing: every single thing you did to help us win in Indiana helped make the difference.

Every call you made, every friend you spoke to about our campaign, every dollar you contributed made tonight’s victory possible. And I couldn’t be more thankful for your hard work.

Every time we’ve celebrated a victory, we’ve celebrated it together. And tonight is no exception. This victory is your victory, this campaign is your campaign, and your support has been the difference between winning and losing.

Thank you so much for making this campaign possible. Let’s keep making history together.

And from Team BHO, arriving at 12:51 a.m.:

Barack Obama’s post Indiana and North Carolina campaign e-mail

We just won a decisive victory in North Carolina thanks to people like you.

Indiana remains too close to call. But what is clear is that we did much better than all the pundits predicted, despite Republicans changing parties to support Senator Clinton, believing she would be easier for Senator McCain to defeat.

Here’s where we stand.

As of Tuesday morning, we needed just 273 delegates to clinch the nomination. When the votes are fully counted Wednesday morning, we will have gained more than a third of them in a single day.

We have a clear path to victory. But now is the time for each one of us to step up and do what we can to close out this primary.

Please make a donation of $25 right now:

https://donate.barackobama.com/results

Thank you for everything you’re doing,

It doesn’t take a sophisticated campaign observer to notice the tonal difference in those letters. Obama scored a big North Carolina victory, and even sort of rescinds his victory speech congratulations to Clinton for taking Indiana. And like her just-barely-a-victory speech last night, Hillary’s e-mail does not declare the Indiana win as signifying anything except her supporters are to be commended. The writing is on the wall; or as the case may be, in her supporters’ e-mail inboxes.

Iowa Caucus 2008: The View From My Laptop

Published by William Beutler on January 3, 2008 in Barack Obama, Democrats, Election Night, Fred Thompson, Iowa Caucuses, Joe Biden, Metapost, National Politics, Republicans, Technology and White House '08. 5 Comments

For the record, besides cable television (MSNBC and FNC), here’s how I’m keeping up on events tonight:

Feel free to recommend something in the comments; I’ll add anything that I end up following.

For the record, I’m hoping for a strong third-place finish for Fred Thompson, and a Huckabee win to keep Romney from getting one. For the Democrats, I’m hoping for a persuasive Obama (not Edwards) victory to keep things interesting. One thing I am definitely rooting against: respectable wins by Romney and Hillary; that is to say, I’m rooting against Iowa.

8:58 update: It’s not even 9:00 Eastern and Fox News is calling it for Huckabee, with Thompson third: 36-23-14. Haha, only if she’s 5'3".

9:28 update: Half an hour later, MSNBC calls Iowa for Obama first, Fox follows close behind. Things will get more interesting.

9:32 update: The Google Maps Iowa caucus page still says:

Come back tonight for live results!

9:45 update: You know, the Dem results came back a lot faster than expected. So much for Edwards’ momentum, though it seems to be playing as a Hillary loss. Meanwhile, Jim Geraghty guessed correctly this morning in a piece that should get a second look.

10:28 update: Back and forth between the non-concession speeches [updated: and in 2OT, victory speeches] on CNN and the down-to-the-wire Blazer game on TNT. For once I need picture-in-picture. [Final update: "115-109, THE HOTTEST TEAM IN THE NBA GOES TO 20 AND 13!"]

11:58 update: Looks like Chris Dodd already had his throwing-in-the-towel banner ready to go:

Chris Dodd drops out

Whereas it appears that Joe Biden did not:

Joe Biden drops out

No great surprise, Mike Gravel’s website hasn’t been throwing rocks into the lake since December 31. [Update: Gravel is still in the race, eh? That'll teach me to believe what Keith Olbermann says.]

12:37 update: Not to pile on Dodd, who wasn’t the only sub-1% Democrat tonight, but the best headline of the night belongs to Eric Pfeiffer:

Chris Dodd .08!

12:52 update: While the most unlikely reportage is Isaac Chotiner’s:

TNR friend Charles Barkley writes to say that Obama winning Iowa is a “great start” and he hopes it leads to Obama “winning it all.” And who wants to argue with Sir Charles?

1:01 update: Calling it a night.

No, wait. One last update: If you’ll allow me to indulge, via Twitter:

Fred Thompson on Twitter

Exit Music For A Campaign

Published by William Beutler on November 7, 2006 in Democrats, Election Night, Meatspace, Midterms '06, National Politics and Online Fundraising. 1 Comment

It is only a matter of minutes now before the polls close and BIog P.I. departs for an evening of electoral victory/defeat partying, letting people with a stake in the day’s events this buy our drinks. In the meantime, here are some thoughts before the election returns are returned…

Today’s Wall Street Journal could have coined it the Wonkette Rule:

Two-by-two, polling specialists from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and the Associated Press will go into rooms in New York and Washington shortly before noon Tuesday. Their cellphones and BlackBerrys will be confiscated; proctors will monitor the doors; and for the next five hours, these experts will pore over exit-poll data from across the country.

If all goes well, only when they emerge from their cloisters will the legions of ravenous political bloggers have any chance of getting their hands on the earliest indication of which party will end up controlling Congress.

The sidebar does, however, single out Nick Denton’s Beltway gossip sheet in a sidebar (though in 2004 Slate’s Jack Shafer joined Wonkette’s Ana Marie Cox in bravely/shamefully running those numbers early):

WSJ pins early exit poll blame on Wonkette

That’s right, it’s all the bloggers’ fault — and not the reporters who leaked the information to them, nor the reporters who leaked the information to themselves for publishing on the Internet.

These things we know: Exit polls are far from authoritative, and one shouldn’t jump to conclusions based on them. However, there are ways of making that point without being as deliciously hubristic as RNC Research Department:

In 2000, Exit Polling Malfunctioned And Incorrectly Projecting [sic] Vice President Al Gore As The Winner Of The Crucial Battleground State Of Florida.

Well, Yes, And Then Some Other Stuff Happened, Too.

Also of some interest — what Danny Glover did for political blogger/consultants last week, today he does for political blogger/donors. Earlier in the week I extrapolated from his numbers (in some cases perhaps a bit too far) to create charts based on them. Today, why don’t I rank his latest findings in order, from those donating the most to those donating the least? Why not indeed:


Blogger Breakout Total
John Hinderaker, Power Line Mark Kennedy ($2,400); Michelle Bachmann ($2,100) $4,500
Markos Moulitsas, Daily Kos Jim Webb ($1,825); Jon Tester ($1,300); Ciro Rodriguez ($250) $3,375
Hugh Hewitt, TownHall.com Jon Kyl ($2,000); Rick Santorum ($1,000) $3,000
Duncan Black, Atrios Vote Vets ($250); Lois Murphy ($200); Patrick Murphy ($200) $650
Matt Stoller, MyDD Ned Lamont $500
Chris Bowers, MyDD Ned Lamont $250
Stirling Newberry, various Ned Lamont $250

All numbers from Glover’s FEC searches, and as I am guessing he did not run every known political blogger’s name through the system, the list is surely incomplete. But would you have pegged Kos to have donated more than Hewitt? I’m pretty sure I would not.

The next time Blog P.I. is updated, the Washington political world will be turned upside down. Or possibly not. But if I had to wager — and I have made my non-wagering predictions elsewhere —  things are more likely than not to end up sideways.

Steal This Election

Published by Olly Ruff on November 7, 2006 in Blog Fights, Democrats, Election Night, Midterms '06, National Politics and Republicans. Closed

It’s not yet clear which party will end up in charge of the House and Senate  — although disclaimers notwithstanding, the prognosis is obviously good for the Dems. But there’s one thing we can be sure of: whoever wins, the other side is going to claim some of the close races were tampered with. Since 2000, the fix is always in, and today may serve as the rightosphere’s first real chance to start yelling about it.

There are a few obvious factors influencing this trend: firstly, everyone seems determined to recapture the spirit of good-natured exuberance that washed over the country in November 2000, but in addition, we’re also now able to read stories from across the country — sometimes sourced and corroborated, sometimes not — establishing that Democrats are shameless crooks. The story that best exemplifies the role of the blogosphere in stoking election-related paranoia is probably this marvellous thing about alleged sabotage of Republican GOTV efforts, which provoked some characteristically level-headed commentary over at Free Republic before turning out to be made up.

Meanwhile, the narrative in the leftosphere remains — as it has for as long as the leftosphere has been in existence — that Republicans are committed to disenfranchising ordinary hard-working Americans. Thus every bit of sleazy electioneering must be termed “voter suppression,” regardless of whether anything is actually being suppressed, while Michael Moore — a man who is to English prose what H.L. Mencken was to documentary filmmaking — continues to uncover nefarious plots at every turn:

They will fight like dogs for the next 24 hours — relentless, unforgiving, nonstop action to squeeze every last conservative voter out of the house on election day. While the rest of us go about our day today, tens of thousands of Republican volunteers are knocking on doors, making phone calls, and lining up rides to the polls.

He almost manages to make it sound sinister, as well as tedious. An anguished cry goes up across the rightosphere: who will be their RFK Jr?

It’s Not Whether You Win Or Lose…

Published by William Beutler on August 9, 2006 in Campaigns, Election Night, Lamont v. Lieberman and Midterms '06. Closed

Can it really be that as yet only one writer in the political mediasphere, bloggers or journalists, has thought to compare Joe Lieberman’s Tuesday night concession speech non-concession:

As I see it, in this campaign we just finished the first half and the Lamont team is ahead. But, in the second half, our team, Team Connecticut, is going to surge forward to victory in November.

With his infamous 2004 New Hampshire primary self-delusion:

We are in a three-way split decision for third place!

Apparently so. Beating me to the punch is none other than David Sirota:

You may recall that after he was crushed in the New Hampshire primary, he proudly boasted that “we are in a three-way split decision for third place” — as if he really thought voters were stupid enough to think that was a good thing and that he was well on his way to winning the nomination. Similarly, today he is claiming that the Democratic Party primary election is just the “first half” of the election process — again, thinking voters are so stupid they don’t see that what he’s really doing is giving the big middle finger to American democracy.

I wouldn’t call Lieberman’s stubborn refusal to admit the obvious after the first primary a “middle finger to American democracy,” but it strikes me as a valid argument this time around.

The comparison is reason enough for me to believe that, despite the rumors, Lieberman will stay in this one to the bitter end. And really, no matter what happens, bitter is how it will be.

P.S. If that wasn’t reason enough, this might be.

Joe Versus the Volcano

Published by William Beutler on August 8, 2006 in Campaigns, Election Night, Lamont v. Lieberman, Midterms '06, National Politics and Primary fights. 2 Comments

Hear that? That’s the sound of the “anti-incumbent mood” becoming CW talking point #1 through November. The three primaries lost by incumbents tonight, in Connecticut, Michigan and Georgia had almost nothing at all to do with one another, but maybe that only reinforces the argument.

Also, here lies the end of the political media’s perception that the netroots haven’t won anything, although conservative bloggers will probably hold them to a win in November. That seems likely enough, if not in Connecticut, then also very possibly in Montana. Not getting a dozen unknown congressional candidates into the group of 435 over the last couple of years will fade from the public consciousness, and probably from the blogospheric one, as well. Of course, no blog can “win” an election — their contribution to GOTV efforts is not as notable as their contribution to the framing of political debates. And that much they’ve done.

I always get in trouble with predictions, but I don’t think Joe Lieberman is a lock for the fall — as the primarhy winner, Ned Lamont will be legitimized to non-primary voters, while Lieberman may indeed start to look like a Sore Loserman. Yes, some Republicans might cross over to support him in the fall — but wouldn’t this anticipation send more Democrats into the Lamont camp? If I was a lefty blogger, I’d say so. [Update: Already one has gone the other way, but I get the impression he wasn't old enough to be registered in Conn. when he lived there.]

The lights went out for another incumbent, Cynthia McKinney in Georgia, which wasn’t very surprising. The leftosphere didn’t want to claim her, while the rightosphere openly encouraged her opponent, Hank Johnson. That’s about what happened when Denise Majette bested McKinney in the primary four years ago, when conservative bloggers cheered on the anti-McKinney. Both Majette and Johnson campaigned as moderates, though Majette all but gave McKinney the seat back during her Katherine Harris-esque run for the Senate two years later.

And lastly, moderate Republican Joe Schwarz got bounced in Michigan. It’s a win for the reconfigured Club for Growth, and I suppose you could say the reconfigured Red State is already 1-0. Sorry, GOPProgress.

P.S. And about that picture… is that more this The Kiss or this The Kiss?