The US media have made an agreement in the last few decades to not broadcast the votes for each state until the polls close for that state in order to not influence voters who have not as yet gone to the polls. But this year State magazine has said to hell with that agreement, they are going to report running totals, because they say that news organizations have a duty to report the news as they get it and not conceal it.
Their Votecastr tracking system takes the vote totals as the precincts report them, and since who voted is not a secret, votes are assigned to each candidate based on historical patterns and micro-targeting data about each voter. They are supplementing this data with poll observers and are doing it for seven states that they think are worth watching closely: Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Iowa, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin.
Of course, you should not make too much of the totals because you do not know how many supporters of each candidate will voted later.
Look on it as a way to pass the time and an alternative to listening to the talking heads prattle endlessly. At least this is actual data. Currently, as of 3:00pm ET, Hillary Clinton is leading in all seven states.
You can follow along here.
Raucous Indignation says
And I will be drinking.
Smokey says
Bwahahahaaa! Wow…
How. The. Fuck. Did. That. Happen?!?!?!
Nogbert says
The answer Smokey is quite simple. The average American is a fascist.
Well you know how your predecessors dealt with Germany and Italy back in the ’40’s?
There’s your cue. Everything else has failed.
sonofrojblake says
When are the media going to stop banging their collective heads against the wall of polls? When are people -- and the left in particular -- going to stop taking any notice of them? Because they’re always wrong and always overly left-biased.
If the polls say the left is losing -- the left is going to lose. If the polls say the left and right are neck-and-neck -- the left is going to lose. If the polls say the left is going to win by a narrow margin THE LEFT IS GOING TO LOSE. Just when is this lesson going to sink in? When are leftist politicians and activists going to look at a 5% lead and PANIC? Because that is the appropriate response.