And We Are Off....

I promise not to talk about midnight votes in New Hampshire this evening, the sort of silly stuff that we generally talk about when we don't have much in the way of real results.

Let's review the things that we think we know so far:
(1) Turnout appears to be high - surprisingly, in many swing states, higher even than 2008.  Perhaps this should not be a surprise, as everyone knows the race is close, whereas 2008 was not so close.  But given all the talk about "enthusiasm gaps" for both candidates, this still is somewhat of a surprise.  Conventional wisdom would say that a high turnout is good for the Democrat, but, of course, as 2004 proved (when GOP turnout was way up but Democratic was not), WHO is turning out matters just as much.

(2) Intrade intelligence doesn't show much change from yesterday.  At this instant, Obama is trading around 70% and Romney around 30%, a slight increase for Obama versus last night, but the numbers have bounced all around this afternoon, so it is too early to call that much of an indicator.

(3) Early exit poll results look favorable to Obama in terms of demographics.  The youth vote and the minority vote are almost exactly tracking to 2008.  This would be extremely good news from President Obama.  Of course, the exit poll results are incomplete, since polls aren't closed yet and see my warning last night about reading too much into exit polls.

So, we will have to wait and see some votes being counted.  Kentucky is already counting in the Eastern Time Zone, where polls closed at 6 PM.  Obviously, Kentucky is expected to go strongly for Mitt Romney.