It's a tie.....??

I turned off the TV after Bill Maher on Friday night, and I'm not turning it on again until election night.  Basta!  I've had enough of the rants, chants, spins, chills, and thrills.  My recollection is that, in Europe, they suspend campaigning and polling several days before the vote, to give the electorate at least a few final days of reduced voltage.   There's another idea whose time has come!

I'll be visualizing election night victory for the Democrats between today and Tuesday night.  My heart isn't in this enough to get on a bus and help get out the vote, which is what several friends have been doing these past weeks and weekends.  I admire them.  I was one of them, back in the day.....

OK, so here's my prediction for Tuesday night.  Obama 329 electoral votes, McCain 209, and 58 Democratic seats in the Senate.  This scenario assumes a sweep of the Northeast (except NH), Midwest (except Missouri), Ohio, PA, Virginia, and FL for Barack, Colorado, New Mexico, and the entire Pacific west coast.

If you have a scenario you'd like to share, post a comment or send me an email.  I thought about setting up a betting pool for this one, but probably not enough time now.

There is another intriguing scenario that I modeled while looking at the electoral map today. This election will be a tie and therefore decided in the House if, from the Obama states listed above, Florida, Virginia, and Ohio go to McCain, we're at 269-269.  Bingo.  Not an impossible scenario, but one which will be resolved in the early part of the evening, let us pray, so we can all get a decent night's sleep.  

The Times reports that Chicago is setting up for a huge victory celebration in Grant Park on election night, and how I wish I could be there (though I don't really deserve it).  Brings to mind the last big political happening I recall on that site, forty years ago.  The mood was far from joyous that night, as tear gas and billyclubs were the order of the evening.  The mayor was a Daley, then, too, and the forces which were set loose that evening gave us four decades of political nightmares that are going to take us at least a decade to dig out of.   

Voting in New York is fun, and I can't wait to get up early and go for it.  In NY, we still use the old-fashioned voting machines with metal levers for the candidates and pulleys that open and close the voting booth curtain.  The same machines I remember from childhood, when I watched the voters line up at Oaklane Elementary School and caught a peek inside the voting booth to what felt to me like hallowed ground.  I still get a chill when I walk into that booth.  It's a privilege I'll never be able to take for granted.