With Obama having an incredibly strong polling day and FiveThirtyEight now projecting his win percentage at 98.1% today, perhaps we shouldn’t be asking if Obama will win tomorrow, but when. Nate Silver, Doug Mataconis at Donklephant, and the Swing State Project have all provided useful guides for hour-by-hour poll closings.
Here’s what you should watch for (all times Eastern, and although there are some very interesting Senate races, I only focused on the McCain-Obama match up):
6:00 PM: Kentucky and Indiana close. The former is obviously going to McCain. But Indiana could be an early bellwether for the night. If McCain wins easily, it may be a very close race, but if Indiana is somehow projected for Obama early on, it’s tough to envision a McCain victory scenario, and we may end up seeing an Obama landslide.
7:00 PM: Polls close in Virginia and Georgia, as well as most of Florida and most of New Hampshire. The Indiana results probably won’t be reported until after 7, at which time results from other key swing states will be coming in. Virginia may be the most important of the night, as Nate Silver explains: “If John McCain loses it, his path to victory is exceptionally narrow—he would need to pull out an upset in Pennsylvania, while holding on to Florida and Ohio, and avoiding a sweep out West. Barack Obama has considerably more ways to win without Virginia, but a failure to close out the state would suggest at best a more circuitous route to victory.”
Florida and Georgia will probably be too close to call until later in the night, however.
7:30 PM: Polls close in Ohio, West Virginia, and North Carolina. McCain will probably hold onto West Virginia, but the other two have been very close and will depend a lot on GOTV efforts.
8:00 PM: A big portion of the Central time zone ends voting around this time, as well as Pennsylvania, which is the state McCain has staked his entire campaign on. If Obama holds onto Pennsylvania, virtually any red state will give him the win. Although he won’t officially cross the 270 mark at that point, we’ll have an idea of when he will.
9:00 PM: The Mountain time zone finishes voting, including Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. If McCain has had a nearly perfect night up to this point (i.e., holding onto Bush states and winning Pennsylvania), Obama will likely need Colorado to win. The Arizona results will also be interesting because of Obama’s recent attempt to make a play for McCain’s home state.
10:00 PM: Polls close in Nevada, Iowa, Montana and New York. This is probably the earliest point at which the race may be officially called for Obama, because he will need the 31 EVs from New York to pass the 270 threshold, Silver says. If it’s still neck-and-neck at this point, Nevada will be the state to watch.
11:00 PM: Polls close on the west coast, which solidly supports Obama. By now we will probably have a president-elect, and I can start thinking about how I’ll spend my time when I no longer have political polls to obsess over.
Cross-posted at Ablogistan.