2008 November 1. Updated. Still Iowa for Obama at 10 pm. There are some changes. North Dakota gets decided at 3:43 am for McCain, instead of after an infinite amount of time. Missouri has flipped into the McCain column, and is the last state to be decided, at 5:10 am. ElectoralVote.com says if Missouri goes McCain and Obama wins the election, Missouri loses its bellwether status. It never had it to begin with. Missouri went the other way from the entire election in 1860, 1872, 1876, 1880, 1888, 1896, 1900, and 1956, when Stevenson took the state. What would happen in this instance is that the statement "The Democrats have never won an election without taking Missouri.", which is true now, would become false.
2008 October 31. Updated. Now Iowa wins it for Obama at 10 pm, right as the polls close.
It is now only 5 days until the Great Presidential Election of 2008. After the conventions, the race was a tie, but Barack Obama has piled up a moderate lead in recent weeks. I therefore expect Election Night not to be as long as in 2000 and 2004. The 2004 race was not settled until Wednesday morning, when it became clear that Ohio, the deciding state, was going to go to Bush by a substantial margin. In 2000, the race was not decided until mid-December, with Florida being the deciding state. So I expect this night to be shorter. How much shorter?
To answer that question, look at what happens on Election Night. The networks will not announce any results for any state until the polls close everywhere in the state. However, they will be performing exit polls, and on this basis, when the polls close, they can project ("call") a state for one candidate or the other. If the race in that state is close, they will not call it then but wait until enough votes are in for them to conclude that a candidate has won it. To get an estimate of Decision Time on Election Night, we need to know how the networks are going to call a state. I have only memory to rely on for this, so I will make a guess at a possible calling function.
This function will be a function of the average poll result for the state. For this number, I am going to use the file provided by Electoral-Vote.Com, as well as their procedure, which is to take an average of all the polls for the previous week. I will use only the two major party candidates' poll numbers, which I will normalize by the usual method, namely to set the vote for Barack Obama
= Poll for Obama / (Poll for Obama + Poll for McCain)
and set the vote for McCain as being 1 - Poll for Obama. Call the poll result for Obama x. Set the closing time of the election polls for the state = c. Then my function is:
f(x) = 0 if |x-0.5| > 0.04 (networks call the state immediately upon poll closing)
= 336, if x = 0.5 (two weeks. Highly improbable in election but not in polls)
= 1/50/|x-0.5| otherwise.
The value of the function is given in hours. I choose a hyperbolic function on the difference between the vote result and 50%. If a candidate is getting 52% (he leads by 4 points), this function gives one hour; that is, the networks will wait an hour before calling the state. If a candidate gets 51%, the wait is 2 hours, and if it is 50.5% (1 point difference) the wait is 4 hours.
I then add this value to the closing time to get an estimated calling time T for the state; in other words,
T= c + f(x).
I rank-order the states by calling-times, and add up the Obama votes. I then look for that time when the Obama vote is 269 electoral votes or more (I assume that Obama wins a 269-269 tie).
I did that this morning and got that the deciding state will be Indiana, and that the calling time will be 9:45 pm. This will allow for an extra snack or drink and some discussion before going to bed for the night.
Here are the deciding states and times I have been getting the past few days, based on the polls, times in EST:
October 12, North Carolina, 10:40 pm
October 22, California+,11:00 pm
October 23, California+, 11:00 pm
October 24, Florida, 9:50 pm
October 26, Florida,10:25 pm
October 27, Florida, 10:00:05 pm
October 28, North Carolina, 10:28 pm
October 29, North Carolina, 10:19 pm
October 30, Indiana, 9:45 pm
October 31, Iowa, 10:00 pm
November 1, Iowa, 10:00 pm
By + for October 22 and 23, I mean that the election is decided by all four states that are immediately called for Obama at 11 pm EST.
From this one can deduce several points. One is that the deciding state is likely to be a large state. Indiana is the smallest state so far that has appeared as a deciding state. For some time earlier this week, McCain was gaining, causing later decision times. But now it's getting earlier again. Yesterday's polls were overwhelmingly for Obama. At 10 pm Obama will either have reached 269 or will be just short of 269. The first state in that hour, from 10-11 pm, that gets called for Obama may very well put him over the top.
This is only a model, and if I change the function, I may change the time and deciding state. But I gather from this that Election Night will be over with by 11 pm EST, and maybe even by 10 pm, and that the deciding state will probably be one of these: California, North Carolina, Indiana, Missouri, Florida, or possibly Nevada, although that is more remote.
