I'm glad you posted this - I may find out why Iowa wasn't defined as Democrat or Republican in the run up to voting. I thought of it as midwest, a lot more rural than urban and wondered why it wasn't either Party's territory. Earlier today I saw the votes for Republican easily outweighed Democrat... but I'm still not sure why it couldn't be predicted sooner.""
They had the results earlier in Iowa than they had them in Ohio. Since Ohio was the big prize, exposing the results of N Mex and Iowa would have taken the suspense out of the results of Ohio and kept sKerry in the game longer. As it was, Iowa, N Mex, AND Nevada all went for BUSH, along with Ohio. The media just didn't want to give out the little prizes while they were hoping that Ohio would go to sKerry. Even today, they were trying to redo simple math with the statistics of Ohio.
Gotta love how Dan Rather pissed in Ed Bradley's beard over the math of the Provisional ballots in Ohio. Ed pointed out the math probabilities of having the provisional ballots making up the difference sKerry needed, and said it couldn't happen. Rather snidely commented that Ed Bradley wasn't a "mathematicion", and Ed spoke right up and said "I used to be a math teacher". Rather just pushed the remark aside, embarrassing Ed Bradley.
I would love to be a fly on the wall at CBS to have heard what Ed had to say to Rather after the show. Rather needs to be blistered for treating Ed in that manner. While I don't watch 60 minutes any more for their strong bias, I still think Ed Bradley is a class act. Newer reporters cannot hold a candle to him.
,,, thanx for explaining that staged rollout of results. That makes sense now.