Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Early Voting Returns from Indiana? Split Electoral Votes?

Evidentially, Indiana and Kentucky will start reporting returns from the Eastern time zone at 6 PM Eastern Time rather than at 7 PM Eastern Time when the polls in the rest of those states close. It will be interesting to see those early returns, particularly in Kentucky (I don't expect it to be close there.) We really won't know much until 7 PM still, given that partial returns can be deceiving when you don't know what precincts are reporting.

One thing to note that we have not discussed at any length is that Maine and Nebraska are actually not winner take all states for electoral votes, unlike the other 48. Each award 2 electoral votes to the statewide winner and the remaining to the winner of each congressional district. The reason we haven't talked about it is that both districts in Maine are expected to break for Obama and all three districts in Nebraska for McCain, as has been the case in every other election (neither state has actually wound up splitting their votes under these laws.) Would be interesting if somehow it were an ultra-close race and they did split, but that seems like a very theoretical discussion at this point.

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