Election Day: Looking Forward and Back

Today is the end to the a highly historic election, which stands out as the most expensive election ever, with Barack Obama raising over $450 million and John McCain raising an additional $230 million. Additionally, Obama could become America's first African-American President, and McCain could become the nation's oldest President elected to a first term. Finally, this election has summoned unprecedented voter turnout, with a record twenty-four million people casting their ballots early. The turnout today is expected to be just as massive, even in areas where neither candidate visited. In fact, the Obama campaign boosted voter registration in states like Alabama and Nebraska, where McCain could gain double-digit victories. According to Ferrel Guillory, a political expert, specifically in Southern politics, this registration boost will likely become significant later on, and D'Linell Finley, a political scientist, predicted that the registration would help Democrats win political offices, like a seat on a state Supreme Court. Whatever the election results are, though, this election may reshape political campaigns for years, and perhaps decades to come.

As for the election results, they will likely depend on eighteen battleground states, which supply one hundred and ninety-four electoral votes. According to ABC News, four of those states - Georgia, Montana, North Dakota, and West Virginia - are leaning Republican, nine states - Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin - are leaning Democratic, and the remaining five states - Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, and Missouri - are toss-ups. In particular, Indiana and North Carolina are behaving quite unusually, as the two states have not voted for a Democratic President since 1964 and 1976, respectively. Some news organizations slightly contradict these predictions, though. As an illustration, the CNN Electoral Map Calculator, which you can use to make predictions of the Presidential Race and compare them to previous races, as of this post, shows that Montana and North Dakota are currently toss-ups, not leaning Republican. Also, the interactive map shows that Iowa appears to be safely Democratic, while Arizona appears to be leaning Republican. Of course, any predictions of the election results are premature, as nobody will see the full spectrum of results until late at night, as according to CNN's diagram of poll closings, Alaska closes its polls at around 1:00 AM, but many of the battleground states will close their polls by 8:00 PM, and all of the battleground states will close their polls by 10:00 PM. Already, though, Obama scored a small victory, as the small village of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, which holds the honor of the first place to release its election results, voted for Obama by 15 to 6. These numbers are small, but all of the registered voters in the town voted, and the village has not voted for a Democratic President since 1968, when the village voted for Hubert Humphrey over Richard Nixon. As you know, Humphrey never won the Presidency, so the village will not foreshadow the outcome of this Presidential race. However, those early results, combined with the historic nature of this election, may signal a change in American politics - a change to the twenty-first century.