Wednesday, January 09, 2008

My Lame Attempt At Liveblogging

9:00 p.m. McCain already won, which makes Romney winning the nomination much less likely.

9:01 p.m. Hillary is in the lead now, which is hardly what the polls predicted.

9:09 p.m. Ron Paul may actually beat Rudy Giuliani tonight. Oh how I hope. In other Ron Paul news, apparently "Ron Paul Newsletters" from 20 years ago were bile-filled racist screeds. Too bad the guy might be a bigoted jerk. Can you love the message and hate the messenger? I think I'll stop mentioning "Ron Paul" the man, and from now on just say "Ron Paul's ideas may actually beat Rudy Giuliani tonight. Oh how I hope." Can I do that?

9:16 p.m. Another thing to notice tonight is that once again, Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents outnumber Republicans at the voting booths by almost 2-to-1. If Democrats can expect 60% of voters to lean liberal this upcoming election — especially in a state where only 26% of people are registered Democrats, like New Hampshire — Republicans could be in the worst trouble they have ever seen in their 150-year history.

9:19 p.m. Voter turnout looks to be huge at greater than 50%. That's amazing for a primary.

9:34 p.m. Jeez. How am I supposed to get any work done when I'm hitting the refresh button every few minutes? Guess I better try.

10:14 p.m. Well, the only thing that I can think will bring about an Obama win at this late stage tonight is if the results from Grafton County (where Dartmouth — and 5,000 college students who tend to vote overwhelmingly for Obama — is located) swings heavily toward Obama.

10:57 p.m. Results are called for Hillary by CNN, 39% to Barrack's 36%.

10:58 p.m. The weird thing is that the vote numbers which I mentioned at 9:16 have shifted quite a bit: It is now 200K voting Democrat compared to 165K Republican... which is hardly as grand as the 2-to-1 ratio it was before. Don't know why it shifted: Democrats still outnumbered Republicans by quite a bit, especially considering the "normal" political makeup of New Hampshire, but not by the great numbers originally suspected.

1:25 a.m. A new term (for me; originated in 1982) is being thrown around tonight to explain the descrepancy in polls and actual voting numbers on the Democrat side: "The Bradley Effect", which is used to describe a situation where white people say they will vote for a black candidate (or say they are "undecided") so as not to appear racist in a poll, but then vote for the white candidate instead.

2 comments:

TheMindFantastic said...

I remember hearing about that bile filled racist screed and according to wikipedia it wasn't his actual views and it was some ghostwriter, however in true Ron Paul form he took the moral responsibility as he didn't pay attention to things being written in his name. Most people who know him and have analyzed the work clearly agree it wasn't him who wrote it. It will continue to bite him in the ass however each and everytime he gets any sort of ground it seems which is unfortunate because even though I am not libertarian/republican (living in Canada clinches any sort of participation actually) if I were he would be the guy I would be voting for.

Jil Wrinkle said...

I read up on all of this as well, and found the same information.

Fact is though, all news is new news the first time you hear it... doesn't matter how long "they" have known about it.

I could (emphasize could) vote for him, because he seems quite cast-iron in his constitutional stances, and no president (even if he believes the things written in those newsletters) would get within a country mile of racist and bigoted claptrap like that, or let it sway his policy even a microdegree.

But all the same, it's a little bit of a comfort to know that I can still talk up the guy's ideas and not have to worry about having to stick to my guns by having him win the nomination and having to put my money where my mouth is by voting for him.