This is it – or is it?
Nov 6, 2012, 8:21 AM | Updated: 4:13 pm
(Tony Dejak/Associated Press)
UPDATE:
Expressing confidence but leaving nothing to chance, President Barack Obama indulged his superstitions by engaging in a traditional Election Day basketball game with friends.
Obama won after he gave a final exhortation to his volunteers to get out the vote, voiced optimism about his chances, and congratulated rival Mitt Romney on a “spirited campaign.”
“I expect that we’ll have a good night,” he said.
The president headed into Election Day locked in a close race with Romney, according to national polls. But he appeared to have a slight edge in some key battlegrounds that will decide the contest, including Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wrote a 1,118-word victory speech on Tuesday as he concluded his yearslong quest for the presidency claiming he had no regrets.
“I feel like we put it all on the field. We left nothing in the locker room. We fought to the very end, and I think that’s why we’ll be successful,” Romney told reporters aboard his plane as he flew from Pittsburgh to Boston.
Dave’s Commentary:
We had an omen at midnight from Dixville Notch, NH:
“This has never happened before in Dixville,” said one of town’s poll-watchers. “We have a tie. Five votes each.”
What do you want to bet those ten voters sat down over waffles and planned it that way. Waffle intoxication – sadly an epidemic in northern New Hampshire.
There are some people predicting the opposite of a tie: Bob Dylan interrupted Blowin’ in the Wind at a concert in Wisconsin to predict an Obama landslide. Jim Cramer from Mad Money predicted that Obama will get 440 electoral votes, which would mean Obama wins in Texas and Georgia – even though they are clearly not swing states. And then on the other side there’s Newt Gingrich.
“My personal guess is that you’ll see a Romney landslide: 300 electoral votes-plus, and we may come very close to capturing the Senate in that context,” said Gingrich.
But the other scenario is that it comes down to the provisional votes in Ohio.
In Ohio, provisional ballots are very common; that means that if you show up and your name isn’t on the registration list or there’s some other problem, you still get to vote but the ballot isn’t counted right away. It’s put aside. And you have 10 days to produce enough ID to prove you’re a bona fide voter.
Well, CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin says there could be as many as 200,000 provisional ballots in Ohio. And if this is as close as most people are predicting:
“You’re going to have, essentially, 200,000-plus people with lawyers from the campaign saying ‘look, my voters are legitimate’ and election officials are going to have to adjudicate each one of those,” said Toobin.
Can you imagine that situation? By the time that battle is through the economy will have fixed itself. The employment numbers for lawyers alone would do it.