Polls just closed in most of Indiana and in Eastern Kentucky. No results just yet. Exit polls are in with the consortium’s media clients, and we’ll soon see some revealing leaks, though none just yet. Overall turnout looks to be nearly as high as 2008, at least in the battleground states, and higher in some key areas for both sides. There’s been a lot of talk about voter irregularities, especially in Pennsylvania and Florida. And there’s even more buzz that the Romney campaign is making the Keystone State, not the Buckeye State, its Gettysburg.
I’m half-listening to MSNBC, and its initial “hints” from the exits indicate a “wrong track” number significantly down from earlier in the year. Now Chuck Todd is suggesting we’ll know, well, everything, by a bit after 9:00. He’s also suggesting that if North Carolina, as much as Pennsylvania, could be key.
I have to say, with all the sources of information we have in 2012, there was less real information over turnout patterns earlier today than I’ve seen in years. I don’t know if it’s a matter of Secretaries of State keeping their mouths shut; polling-place confusion that made it difficult to determine turnout from the length of lines; or just local irregularities, but we don’t know a lot more right now about the shape of the electorate or the last-minute dynamics of this election than we did before polls opened this morning.
So we’re just going to have to follow the results, with some additional hints soon from the exits.
UPDATE: Big hints from CNN, which usually is the first to show exit poll data: racial composition of the electorate very similar to 2008, so no super-boost in white voting (candidate percentages will, of course, be key. And then there’s this pro-Obama surprise, via Think Progress: under-30 vote similar percentage of vote as in 2008. Obama won’t get as high a margin, but this is part of the “discouraged Democratic base” we have been hearing about.
