How to Be the First to Know Who’s Winning Tonight

Preaching to the Choir ^ | 11/6/12 | Rick Hatch

[Stat Man]

The “experts” will tell you that the swing states will decide the winner of tonight’s election.

And that’s certainly true.

But don’t make the easy mistake of following their faulty logic that since the swing states will decide the winner, results in other states are irrelevant.

In fact, results in other states can tell us early whether or not the polls this year are accurate, as liberals hope, or skewed with oversampling of Democrats as many conservative pundits believe. Tonight I’ll be using a spreadsheet where I’ve entered the “tipping point” for each state, as a value between -77.8 (District of Columbia) and 41.2 (Utah), representing the percentage margin Romney would be expected to be ahead (positive values) or behind (negative values) Obama in each state, if the election was a dead heat.

As results come in, if Romney is significantly outperforming these numbers, I’ll know he’ll probably win the election. If the current polls are right, Romney will be underperforming these numbers by a couple percentage points, and I’ll know Obama will probably win. If the race breaks either way and isn’t “too close to call”, I suspect I might be able to predict that a bit earlier than the media will be willing to do, because they will rely solely on swing state returns.

If the race remains “too close to call”, ...

So how can you play along at home? ...

[Stat Man]

22 states with partial returns in, 3 at 50% or more
Romney 27%, Obama 73% chance of winning.

[Stat Man]

Hmm... Odds are if I’m hitting the bottle, they won’t be rioting, if you know what I mean.

[Secret Agent Man]

I got you. Stop before you hit ‘coma’. There’s only one way the other side is gonna off me and I won’t make it very easy.

[Stat Man]

I hear you.
I gotta move though. It’ll be easy for them with me simply because when I say I represent the 1% it’s not about income, it’s the percentage of Republicans in my neighborhood.

40 states now with partial returns in, 10 at 50% or more precincts in.
Romney 21, Obama 79 percent chance of winning.

I’m almost ready to call this over before the media does.

At this point, Romney only wins with freakish voting in Ohio and some other swing state like Colorado that runs counter to Obama’s results in the rest of the country.

[Stat Man]

44 states with partial returns in, 17 with 50% or more precincts in.

Romney 23%, Obama 77% chance of winning.
Romney under-performing “tipping point” in most states (27 of the 44).

However, creeping back towards Romney since my last check.
Must wins now are FL, VA, OH and one other swing state... probably CO only one possible.

OH and CO looking unlikely but possible at the moment.

I’m still close to calling this for Obama, but not ready yet.

[Stat Man]

Well, I’m not sure this system achieved it’s desired goal. When I punched in the numbers that finally convinced me it was over, all but 4 states partially in, 34 states over 50% in, Obama 85% chance of winning, it was almost to the moment that Fox called Ohio and the whole race for Obama.

So I say it was a tie.