Nate Silver has Obama at a 86.3% chance of victory, and I like his methodology.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

Basically, the stars have to align for Mitt to win. Primarily, he needs Florida badly, and Ohio almost as badly, but even if he wins both, Obama still has plenty of avenues to victory.

Here's a very good interactive chart, showing all the combinations of states needed for each to win. 84% of the potential outcomes of these battleground states favour Obama, and Obama leads or is tied in most of the polls in these states.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/02/us/politics/paths-to-the-white-house.html

Could Romney steal it through connections and fraud? Maybe. I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but to do that, I think things will have to be closer than they are right now. The Republicans are already pointing fingers. I hope this one has already been decided, but I could be wrong.

I pretty much agree with Chansen. The campaign has largely been a carnival on the tip of a very big iceberg. As for the difference between the two… I'm not persuaded it will prove as ground moving as many good people hope. The economy is in cyncical hands and that's going to take a lot of change… a bigger change, maybe, than an election can deliver. Values have to shift.

Assuming Obama wins, there is going to be hell to pay among Republicans. Pardon the pun. The teahadists are going to be apoplectic, but they're one of the main reasons Romney could lose - lots of people are repulsed by the jesus freaks who have infiltrated the GOP and want to shove their beliefs down everyone's throat. That's gonna work for 30% of the population, but 70% of the population is going to run the other way, screaming. And critically, it will be the young people leading the pack.

The Republican party is simply on the wrong side of history when it comes to these cultural issues. With changing demographics, the chances of them winning the White House get slimmer every year. During the presidential campaign, Romney seriously, seriously downplayed the same tea party rhetoric that he embraced during the primaries, and he still looks like he is bound for failure.

Any Republican nominee knows he/she can't win the nomination without being seriously right-wing, and they know they can't win the presidency by being seriously right-wing. Romney was caught between a rock and a hard place, pulled an "etch-a-sketch", looked like a flip-flopper, and now he's down in the polls on the eve of the election.

There are plenty of other factors at play here, true. But I think the right-wing, evangelical-driven platform that Republicans promote when talking amongst themselves will never get them in the White House again. In 4 years, the changing demographics will only make it worse for the GOP. Some will realize this and call for change. Others will label them as RINOs and the infighting could be epic.

At this point I'd bet on Obama, and I'll go out on a limb and say he gets at least 310 electoral votes (he needs 270 to win.)

I don't doubt that Obama would be the winner in an honest election. But Ii don't think we understand the extent of corruption in US elections. it was African-American friends who gave me the scoop on that and, I understand, latinos have the same problem. There was no doubt of severe illegality in the first Bush victory. But, of course, it all just disappeared.

Nor do I want to point the finger just at the US. Our reaction to certain behaviours in the last Canadian election was pretty tepid. I expect worse in the next one.

As well, both Canada and the US are drifting into being corporate states. that is, in practical terms the rich are heavily represented in government because they are rich. An NB billionaire about a year and a half ago openly stated it in one of his newspapers when he said he had formed a coaltion with the government. Coalition. That meant he was a member of the government. And he's right. by his order, a group of his hacks have been appointed by him as official financial ad visors to the finance minister. (You or I, for example, would have no such right.)

The corporate state became better known under Mussolini as fascism.

Romney will win unless Obama does.

Well said. (and of course, Obama will win unless Romney does)

No one thinks Stein has a chance? 

This morning I heard that Obamacare could lead to a brain drain of our doctors.  I'm not fully informed of the details of exactly how the system would work, but wouldn't it mean that doctors would get less bonuses or other major pay incentives to go down there?  Sure, more doctors will be needed, but personally I wouldn't be in any rush to go down South and be involved in a new system if I were a doctor.

I wouldn't want to have ANY job in the US.  They can't even figure out how to organise an election in a democratic, efficient, just manner.  What is that  causes them to ignore basic grade school arithmetiec and act as if thousands of people can vote in a few hours at underserviced polling stations?   It isn't rocket science.  They know how many voters reside in a particular area, they know how long it takes to process each voter through the polling station and out the door.  That means they just have to do some number work and provide enough spots for people to vote at.  

It doesn't bode well for them being able to organise anything much.  Sheesh!

I saw a great thing to contemplate...

The Republicans and John McCain could have chosen Mitt Romney, instead they chose Sarah Palin....

Chew on that for a bit....

Hi graeme

I sure don't understand the cheating aspect as I'm reading it today? I should think they could manage to have some type of security computer programmers.....?....but I'm not knowledgable in the field...?  This article  sounds totally off the wall to me .......they've had 4 years to fix things or revert back to the old manual voting system?

Quote:

With electronic voting machines, which leave no paper trail and are programmed with proprietary software, the count can be decided before the vote. Those who control the electronics can simply program voting machines to elect the candidate they want to win. Electronic voting is not transparent. When you vote electronically, you do not know for whom you are voting. Only the machine knows.

According to most polls, the race for the White House is too-close-to-call. History has shown that when an election is close and there’s no expectation for a clear winner, these are the easiest ones to steal. Even more important, the divergence between exit polls, perhaps indicating the real winner, and the stolen result, if not overdone, can be very small.

Those who stole the election can easily put on TV enough experts to explain that the divergence between the exit polls and the vote count is not statistically significant or is because women or racial minorities or members of one party were disproportionately questioned in exit polls.

There have been recent reports that, because of costs, exit polls in the 2012 presidential election will no longer be conducted on the usual comprehensive basis in order to save money. If the reports are correct, no check remains on election theft.

http://www.infowars.com/u-s-elections-will-the-dead-vote-and-voting-mach...

Other voting news...sorry, I'm too bored with the election  to read much of it. Some kind of messy hoopla....!

A report last month by the Voting Technology Project, a joint effort by the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found some electronic voting systems had a failure rate as high as punch cards. —

Technology: solution or problem? — The report said between four million and six million votes were "lost" in the 2000 election, and that despite some progress since then, it's not clear whether the problems could be repeated.

http://phys.org/news/2012-11-voting-machines-election.html

New Jersey lets Sandy victims vote via e-mail -

CNN.com www.cnn.com/2012/11/...voting.../index.html - United States by Brandon Griggs - in 290 Google+ circles 1 day ago – (CNN) -- New Jersey residents displaced by Superstorm Sandy will be allowed to ... qualify as "overseas voters," meaning they are eligible to vote remotely. ...

Facebook users, tell us if you're voting and what issues matter. New Yorkers will be allowed to vote in any polling place: governor ... news.yahoo.com/yorkers-allowed-vote-polling-place-go... - United States 18 hours ago – ... affected by superstorm Sandy will be allowed to vote in Tuesday's U.S. election ... at voting stations other than the ones to which they are assigned. ... Obama turns re-election prospects over to voters AP - 2 hrs 58 mins ago ...

Stardust, did you seriously just link to infowars?!? Wouldn't it have been more accurate to find out what Glenn Beck thinks?

Here again is an example of how we think differently. I'm linking to a statistician who has a history of aggregating data and using it to place odds on voting outcomes that have proven to be remarkably accurate. You're linking to a conspiracy site that has never been shown to have ever dipped its toe in the pool of reality. They think 9/11 was an inside job, they're birthers, and they're all buying ammo and stockpiling food in their bunkers. Read the comments on the site - you've linked to the lunatic fringe of American society.

Yikes.....I'm rather shocked....how can you tell.....!!!!

If the election really is rigged I'm going to bet fifty cents ( that's all its worth) that Romney will win.

Programmer under oath admits computers rig elections

Feb.2012 Primary

Evidence/Proof - 2012 Election Rigged Vote Fraud. Primary/Caucus/Maine. Doug Wead, Ben Swann, Reality Check, Rachel Maddow, Judge Napolitano.

chansen.....I've no clue about infowars...but if you say so......

In any case is there truth in the rigging...your opinion?

To even GET to infowars, you're on some idiotic email list or visiting some crackpot sites. When you get this info, think. Think about what they are suggesting. Does it seem plausible? Could enough people in a company like Diebold pull off voter fraud on that scale without being found out? What would be the risk if caught? Maybe there is voting fraud, but linking to a site like infowars just kills the credibility of the story before the first word. If a site seems sensationalistic, it is.

American elections have always been marked by rigging - and on a grand scale. For a century and more after slavery ended, it was virtually impossible for southern blacks to vote. The poll officials were all white, and would find any reason to bar them.One trick was to make the voter interpret a portion of othe constitution. Of     course, the white official would aways decide the interpretation was wrong. no vote.

That still happens. In florida, governor Jed Bush disqualified many thousands of Black and latinos to help brother George carry the state.

In the case of voting computers, the company that makes them is a heavy donor to the Republican party -and romney's son is a major shareholder.

To add to it, exit polls have consistently shown that the number of people who say they voted for each party is not consistent with the machine results.

Then you have the two million people who are registered to vote, and whose votes will certainly count.  And they're all dead.

Then there are the many thousands, especially in florida, whose registration to vote will have been "lost".

American democracy is something way back in the distant past - if it ever existed.

CBC Radio had a program several years ago that examined how electronic voting programs can be adjusted to count one kind of vote more than another kind of vote: 100 votes for A can be counted as, for example, 105 votes for A and 100 votes for B can be counted as 95 votes.

lol Including wondercafe, huh?

I'm pretty sure I saw a similar documentary.  The candidate with double letters in their name ends up being the automatic winner.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0483726/

graeme

I was checking Snopes re the story about Romney's son owning the voting machines.

Here's the scoop:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/romney/votingmachines.asp

Chansen: I'm not on any email list. I like to google. I can read serious or sensational or conspiracy. I'm not limited.

I just had a post from an old friend of CBC days who was parliamentary correspondent for some time. Apparently, he has a blog with a recent article of this question.  I'll look it up later because I'm running way behind time right now.

However, He points out that there is no independent agency that monitors US voting. It's all done by appointees of the two parties - so it's highly partisan. He notes a tremendous rise in irregularities in recent years. The robocall was an american invention. As you know, it has now arrived in Canada under Harper. It seems it's very, very dificult to trace the cause of this sort of thing - so we may (almost certainly) see an increase of these US irregularities in Canadian elections.

Another practice is a low number of voting stations  and lots of delays in an area oriented to the "wrong" candidate. That creates huge lineups that discourage voting. You also get party employees on the street telling people who seem unlikely to have one that they need photo ID to vote. These tricks work best among the poor and minorities.

Obama has little chance of winning if Romney is elected.

At least this time round there'll be no crying over "dimpled chads." 

graeme

More google news:

???

UN will monitor the elections....

http://patdollard.com/2012/10/international-un-monitors-to-watch-u-s-pol...

This arrived on my FB page.  It sounds like an idea that should have been activated many years ago.  From my observations it would seem that a group of kids in Elelmentary School could organise a better democratic election.

https://www.change.org/petitions/united-states-senate-and-house-of-representatives-institute-uniform-national-standards-for-voter-eligibility-and-access

And that's the problem - if you believe everything you read, without question, you're ripe for being used. By conspiracy theorists, religious leaders, or any other form of scam artist.

Here, you eventually found the Snopes link, which is great. But I think most people would have discounted the story based on the other content on the infowars site. Even the ads on the sidebar are a flashing beacon of insanity.

The Internet is rife with scam artists who want your money and your mind. You need to be skeptical about what you read, but skepticism is a muscle that atrophies with disuse like any other. Hey, we can all be tricked, but if you're tricked by a site like infowars, you need to re-assess everything you've been reading.

Chansen

Please don't worry so much about me.....!!!!..you're making me laugh...I can't bother going back to read what I posted  but I certainly didn't mean to say I believed  everything I read on the net.

hear hear to stardust: "Some kind of messy hoopla....!" :3

The POTUS is just the icing on the sundae...the more important people are all the other people on the ballot...these are the people who actually get stuff done...it's part of the social game to concentrate on the POTUS...

So which of the representatives are you people rooting for or against?

The photographs of UN observers are more than a little misleading. There is no way the US would accept blue berets on american soil.  In any case, 44 observers would be insignificant in such a huge election. As well, in most states, any person intruding in any way at a voting site and in the declared capacity as an observer would either be hustled off or jailed.

Nate Silver and his 538 blog is, once again, looking like the best predictor of these election results. Who knew that math worked so well?

therefore G_d exists!  who knew?

quick people, send your money (and children) to Nate Silver

Nate took a lot of flak these last few weeks. He was ignored by many media outlets and criticized by others, who tried to make this election look closer than it was. Nate, once again, called it. In fact, if Obama's slim lead in Virginia holds, Nate may be 50 of 50.

I will concede that Nate is one cool dude .

Projection at 11:30 p.m. is that Obama has the cat in the bag.......Go Obama Go....!!!!!

LOL @graeme re the UN observers .....!!!!....that's so funny.

I'll get on my horse and gallop off to see what else I can discover on this topic.

O.K. graeme?

graeme

I dug this up .....the Hill:

( Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)

The request for foreign monitoring of election sites drew a strong rebuke from Catherine Engelbrecht, founder and president of True the Vote, a conservative-leaning group seeking to crack down on election fraud. “These activist groups sought assistance not from American sources, but from the United Nations,” she said in a statement to The Hill. “The United Nations has no jurisdiction over American elections.”

Neil Simon, director of communications for the OSCE’s parliamentary assembly, agreed the U.N. does not have jurisdiction over U.S. elections but noted all OSCE member counties, which include the United States, have committed since 1990 to hold free and democratic elections and to allow one another to observe their elections.

The observers, from countries such as Germany, France, Serbia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, will observe voting at polling places and other political activity. “They [will] observe the overall election process, not just the ballot casting,” said Giovanna Maiola, spokeswoman for OSCE. “They are focusing on a number of areas on the state level, including the legal system, election administration, the campaign, the campaign financing [and] new voting technologies used in the different states.”

In a follow-up e-mail, Maiola noted that it is a limited election-observation mission. She said “the OSCE has regularly been invited to observe elections in the United States, in line with OSCE commitments.” Access of international observers during voting is explicitly allowed in some states such as Missouri, South Dakota, North Dakota and New Mexico. “

State law does not generally provide for international observers,” Maiola said. “However, through our contacts at state and county level in certain states, we managed to secure invitations at local level and we have taken up the offer to observe. Where this is not possible, we will respect the state regulation on this matter and will not observe in precincts on Election Day.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/263141-international-monitors-at-po...

And the winner is... Barack Obama! 

LMAO: http://isnatesilverawitch.com/

One last thing before I nod off: There were same-sex marriage ballot initiatives in Maine, Maryland, Washinton and Minnesota. Same sex marriage passed in Maine and Maryland, and it is leading in Washington. The initiative to ban same sex marriage in Minnesota has all but failed, trailing 51%-47% with 91% of the ballots in.

Religious thuggery and the desire for a more theocratic government in the US took a major beating tonight. The fallout is sure to be fun to watch. Women absolutely kicked Romney in the gonads, voting 55-45 for Obama. Will Republicans stop the Roe v Wade reversal talk? Three quarters of minorities voted for Obama. Will Republicans stop talking like most Latinos are illegal aliens?

If they move to the centre on social issues, they'll alienate a large right-wing, born-again contingent. If they double down and stay the course, they'll just lose more elections. They cultivated close ties with the crazies on the religious right, and now the experiment has run amok.They are almost unelectable when it comes to the presidency, and there is no clear way to fix the problem.

Everyone agree with Jon Stewart? Should they start printing "Jeb Bush 2016" signs? All they'd need is a lesbian latino for a running mate, and one of those should be easy to find in the Republican party...

now that the 'publicans have lost with their Freak Flag contender (the planet Kolob mourns) i wonder what they will do...

whatever it is, i do hope that they are able to forgo the silly tribalisms and get down to helping their fellow human being...and this goes for Dems too :3

oh, and here's a neat video on how a 2 party system can be due not due to fraud or intention, but just by how things work out

Gee! chansen is right about the thuggery of church-going people. I've never heard of any thuggery attributed to athests.

Loved the video:  should be compulsory viewing for Liberal, New Democrats and Greens.

Atheists are so far ahead of the curve on social issues compared to the religious right, we can't even see them in the rear view mirror. As long as American evangelical/born again Christians are running the Republican party platform and keep doubling down on preventing the friends of young people from marrying, science denial, and only giving a damn about human life until it exits the womb, they are almost surely going to lose the big vote.

Catholic leaders told people to vote Romney. Billy Graham told people to vote Romney. Voters were warned of all kinds of divine retribution if they voted Obama back in, or voted for same sex marriage ammendments. And America took in all these recommendations from their religious leaders...and flipped them the bird. It was wonderful to watch.

It was, I think, evidence of the declining influence of religion and religious leaders. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's a blip, but I don't think so. Look at the demographics of the exit polls. In Maryland, 70% of people 18-29 voted in favour of same sex marriage. In Maine it was 68%. In Washington it was 65%. In Minnesota, 65% voted against the ban.

Two thirds of young people disagree with the Republicans on this one hot button topic, many because they have gay friends. The religious right are thugs and they are on the wrong side of history. Republicans who believe in freedom and small government have my sympathy. The will have to jettison the religious right and suffer the short term consequences, or risk political obscurity for decades to come.

I am not sure how you hope to be elected if your platform, politics, or rhetoric do not include or marginalize too many folks. I have wanted to break out the easel and start drawing circles and where they intersect, like my Algebra teaching teaching us sets.

Women
Pro-choice
LGBTQ
Immigants
Union members
Latinos
African Americans
Youth
Etc.
Etc.
Etc

Who is left to vote for you but some conservatives, some Tea Party folks,some real rich folks, and older white folks?

Exactly.

Mitt Romney suffered a huge personal loss last night, but the religious right suffered a massive collective loss. I don't recall a time when so many religious leaders from across Christianity stepped up and supported one candidate and predicted dire consequences for electing the other.

I think there is going to be a civil war inside the Republican party.

I'm sure many who voted for Obama were Christians also. Romney just seemed to be concerned with creating and enforcing laws that would overrule grace.

waterfall-good summing up of mormon beliefs-laws are more important than grace.

Not saying they weren't Christians, but they largely weren't Jesus freaks.

But you inadvertantly bring up a good point. Will some Christian leaders who backed Romney suddenly start acting like an Obama victory was their intent all along?

CNN is asking the same questions about the influence of the religious right:

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/07/election-results-raise-questions-about-christian-rights-influence/?hpt=hp_c2_7

But this I didn't expect:

I knew a lot of Catholics didn't listen to their bishops and priests, because Catholic families no longer have an average of 8 kids. But is there hope for evangelicals ignoring their pastors as well?!? 30% of them who did is awesome.

And this is also awesome:

Yes, Ralph, and he lost.

more news:

Marijuana is legalized in Washington State & Colorado

Gay marriage has now been ratified in 3 more states:  Washington State, Maryland & Minnesota

what else? :3