Pittsburgh Steelers beat Washington Redskins in the NFL on Monday night for a dominant victory that Barack Obama will see as a good omen.
For all but one of the last 17 presidential ballots, since 1937, a Redskins victory has signaled a win for the party currently in power.
Pittsburgh held Redskins runner Clinton Portis and sacked quarterback Jason Campbell seven times for a 23-6 win.
Interviews with Obama and rival John McCain aired on US TV at half-time.
Democrat candidate Obama – a senator from Illinois, home of the NFL’s Chicago Bears – mixed American football and basketball analogies into his interview.
“At this point, not to use sports metaphors, but you’ve left everything on the field, and now you just gotta see how it turns out,” he said.
“I think we’ve got a great shot, but you don’t know until the buzzer sounds.”
Obama was pictured last week at a rally with a Steelers jersey bearing his name, given to him by team owner Dan Rooney.
His Republican rival McCain, from Arizona, has had the backing of former Redskins coach Joe Gibbs.
In his 1999 memoir, Faith of My Fathers, he described being under interrogation pressure while a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
“I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron,” he wrote.
In Monday’s recorded interview McCain suggested the formation of a union to protect the interests of professional boxers.
“These are for individuals who usually come from the lowest rung on our economic ladder, their careers are not very long, and I think that there’s been too many cases of exploitation by… unsavoury individuals,” McCain said.
At the first game hosted by the Redskins on the eve of a presidential election since 1984, election fever was in the air.
One fan alternately waved a white towel with Barack Obama’s image in the left hand and an all-burgundy Redskins towel in the right hand.
Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger scored on a one-yard run at the end of the first half but a right shoulder injury knocked him out of the game.
Willie Parker added a one-yard touchdown run before Byron Leftwich, Roethlisberger’s replacement, connected with Santonio Holmes to boost Pittsburgh’s victory margin.
The “Redskin Rule” has held true for 71 years, since the team moved from Boston to the US capital.
There was a caveat in 2004, when a Green Bay win should have signalled defeat for George W Bush, but some rule-backers note that Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, so his re-election was not a true repeat.
Barack Obama and John McCain will be carefully watching Virginia early tonight. Television viewers should, too. The state is in the first wave to close polling places, at 7 pm Washington DC time. The results will be telling. Obama has pushed hard to flip the state, which hasn’t backed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964, and he led in pre-election polls.
“An Obama win in Virginia would be a sign the race is over,” said John Fortier, a research fellow at Washington’s American Enterprise Institute who wrote a book about the U.S. Electoral College. “If he wins Virginia, he is likely to be doing well elsewhere.”
Virginia’s results may signal a tidal wave of states turning Democratic after backing Republican President George W. Bush in 2004.
Another on the watch list at 7 pm is Indiana, which also hasn’t backed a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson won in a nationwide landslide 44 years ago.
Ohio follows Virginia and Indiana with a scheduled poll closing time of 7:30 pm Washington DC time. In 2004, the state and its 20 electoral votes remained too close to call until the next day, when Democrat John Kerry conceded. For McCain, the state is critical: No Republican has ever won the White House without claiming Ohio.
North Carolina and West Virginia, two other states Obama is contesting that went Republican in the last two elections, close at the same time as Ohio.
Half an hour later, at 8 pm, the biggest of the battleground states, Florida, is slated to close all its polls, along with those in Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
“It is nearly impossible for McCain to win without winning Ohio, Virginia, and Florida,” Fortier said. Bush won all three in 2004, ending up with 286 Electoral College votes. A candidate needs 270 to get to the White House.
The first poll closings may also offer early clues on Senate and House races. Kentucky’s balloting is due to finish by 7 pm and attention will be on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s efforts to hold his seat. A loss for the Republican would bolster Senate Democrats’ chances of getting to the 60 seats they need to block a filibuster.
WASHINGTON – (DPA) In a departure from 40 years of Republican loyalty, 21 voters in remote northern New Hampshire gave a resounding “yes” to Democrat Barack Obama early Tuesday.
With 15 votes for Obama and six for McCain reported by broadcasters, the opening of the Dixville Notch polling station Tuesday just after midnight marked the opening of US elections that could produce the first-ever African-American president.
By tradition since 1960, voters in Dixville Notch near the Canadian border cast the first votes in presidential elections. The only Democrat who took the precinct since then was Hubert Humphrey, who lost the 1968 national election to Richard Nixon.
Voters in nearby Hart’s Location were also to have voted soon after midnight, a tradition the town started in the 1990s.
Other polls around New Hampshire will open at 6 a.m. (1100 GMT) Tuesday, as will polls in Connecticut, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, Maine and Vermont. The last polls will close in Alaska at 0500 Wednesday.
Obama is favoured to win Tuesday’s vote. An aggregate of major national polls compiled by realclearpolitics.com gave Obama 51.2 percent to Republican Senator John McCain’s 44.2 percent on Monday.
Dixville voters assembled in the historic ballot room of the Balsams Grand Resort Hotel, an old-fashioned establishment where men must wear suits and ties to dine.
The voting room, just next to the billiard room, is a panorama of presidential history that includes photos of most presidents since Dwight Eisenhower, 1953-61, began visiting the hotel.
Tally boards dating back to the 1960 contest between Democrat John Kennedy and Republican Nixon are on display.
In January’s intra-party votes, Democrats in Dixville chose Obama and Republicans chose McCain. New Hampshire is considered a swing state today.
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has won in the two US towns that traditionally open US election voting.
In Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, he won 15 votes to his Republican rival John McCain’s six, becoming the first Democrat to win there since 1968.
In Hart’s Location he won 17 votes, while Mr McCain won 10, and Ron Paul two, showing 100% voter turnout.
Results from the rest of the US are expected from 2300 GMT as citizens elect their 44th president.
Hart’s Location began the practice of voting early in 1948 so that railroad employees could vote before going to work.
The nation’s first 18-year-old to cast his vote, Arron Dindorf of Hart’s Location, said: “It’s one of the few times the town gets together all at once.
“It’s neat to see how into it people are, and they want to keep the tradition alive.”
Obama supporter Tanner Nelson Tillotson became Dixville Notch’s first voter when his name was drawn from a bowl.
Of his chosen candidate’s win, he said: “I’m not going to say I wasn’t surprised.”
Dixville Notch began its tradition of midnight voting soon after Hart’s Location, but with increasing media attention the practice was stopped in 1964. It resumed for the 1996 election.
ABC News‘ Tahman Bradley, Rigel Anderson and Arnab Datta Report:
While Sen. Barack Obama’s late grandmother Madelyn Dunham will not live to see the outcome of this historic election, her 2008 vote will count.
Hawaii Chief Elections Officer Kevin Cronin told ABC News this evening that the absentee ballot cast by Dunham before she passed away will count. Cronin said Dunham’s absentee ballot was received on October 27 and found to meet the requirements of a valid absentee ballot and will therefore be counted with the rest of the state’s ballots tomorrow.
Obama learned that his grandmother lost her battle with cancer early Monday. She was 86.
The final deluge of national tracking polls and state polls has arrived, and they reveal a most unusual picture. Barack Obama’s lead in the national tracking polls has widened by almost 2% in the final days, now standing at 7.4% in the realclearpoltics.com average. Put quite simply, it is inconceivable that a candidate could win the national popular vote by over 7% (conceivably a 10 million vote margin if the turnout hits 140 million), and lose the Electoral College.
And yet, on a state by state leveI in the key battleground states, the race is much closer and appears to have tightened in the last few days. This is not to say that Obama is in any serious danger of losing. But the national margin may be less indicative of the state of the race than in prior years, due to a wide imbalance in what I and other call “wasted votes” or excess votes in landslide states. In 2004, George Bush won big margins in many Southern states and in Indiana, the upper Midwest and Rocky Mountain states. This year, John McCain could win almost all of the states in these regions, but even if he does, his margin of victory is likely to be smaller in every state he wins than the margin Bush obtained.
On the other hand, Obama is headed for enormous margins in many states: California, Illinois, New York, Maryland, New Jersey and Massachusetts among them, and far bigger margins than John Kerry won in some other states such as Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Washington and Oregon. In just three states: Illinois, California and New York, Obama will likely pile up a margin of between six and seven million votes. Think about it this way: if the final popular vote margin turns out to be 5%, and turnout is 140 million, then these three states could provide roughly 80% to 100% of Obama’s total popular vote margin. If Obama wins by 7%, they would provide 60 to 70% of the total margin.
In the battleground states, almost all red states, the race is much closer. John McCain’s problem is that he needs to win virtually every closely contested state to win, and that is unlikely. In my most recent article, I referred to tiers, and I still find that a helpful way to look at the race. Two red states — Iowa and New Mexico, with 12 Electoral College votes between them, seem safely in Obama’s corner. The most recent polling in Iowa (7) has given Obama a double digit lead in every survey. In New Mexico (5), it is a bit closer, but Obama’s lead ranges from 7 to 10 points in the non-partisan surveys.
Assuming Obama holds all the Kerry-won blue states, these two red states takeaways bring Obama to 264 electoral College votes. The next most likely red state to fall is Nevada (5). And Nevada would be enough, for with a 269-269 tie, the House of Representatives would likely give a victory to Obama. So if McCain cannot turn a blue state, he must win Nevada. The closest McCain has come in any recent Nevada poll is down 4, and he is further behind in several of them.
The two blue states still being contested both show solid Obama leads. Pennsylvania has clearly tightened in the last week, and many surveys now show Obama up by 4 to 6 points (he led by double digits only a week ago). In New Hampshire, other than Rasmussen which has Obama up 7, most polls have Obama up more than that.
McCain also trails in Virginia (13) and Colorado (9). Both states, I think, will be closer than some of the Obama partisans believe is the case. Rasmussen has had Obama up 4 in both states, in each of the last two surveys. There are other polls showing Obama up by 4 to 6 in Virginia, and 5 in Colorado. I think Colorado is a bit safer for Obama than Virginia.
I feel fairly confident in predicting that Obama will win Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada, Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. If Obama wins no other red states, he will be at 291. What this mean is that if McCain wins all the other closely contested states — Florida (27), Ohio (20), North Carolina (15), Indiana (11), Missouri (11), Georgia (15), Montana (3), North Dakota (3), he will fall short. Simply put, for McCain to win, he needs to hold all those state just listed and also win either Nevada or New Hampshire, and either Pennsylvania or both Colorado and Virginia. To say this is a tall task is to greatly understate the odds.
I think Obama has an edge in Ohio due to organization, and help from the highly partisan Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who has done everything possible to allow fraudulent votes to come in, and keep Republican votes out. I am less certain about Florida, Missouri and North Carolina. I think McCain will win narrowly in Indiana and Georgia. If forced to make a pick, I will give North Carolina and Missouri to McCain and Florida to Obama.
Net, the Electoral College comes out 338-200 for Obama. I think the real range for Obama’s victory is from 291-247 in the best case for McCain to 364-174 in the worst case. If Virginia is too close to call tomorrow night, then McCain may make it a long night. If Indiana is too close to call, or falls to Obama, it will be a landslide in the Electoral College, similar to Clinton’s wins in 1992 and 1996 (370 and 379 Electoral College votes, respectively). All things being equal (whatever that means), Bill Clinton won by near 6% in 1992, and by over 8% in 1996, and if Obama’s margin falls in that range, a big Electoral College win should not be a big surprise. If the Electoral College race turns out to be close, despite a significant popular vote margin for Obama, it is because of the distortion of the wasted votes described earlier. If McCain loses by 3-5%, and escapes with a narrow Electoral College win, I do not think I would want to be a policeman in Grant Park Tuesday night.
As for the Senate, I think the Democrats will pick up 7 seats to get to 58, if you count Joe Lieberman on the Democrats’ side. The 7 pickups are in Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado, New Hampshire, Alaska, North Carolina, and Oregon. If Republicans have a good night, and win some close ones (they lost them all in 2006 except for Tennessee), they could hold onto Oregon (Gordon Smith), and possibly North Carolina (Dole). Stevens in Alaska and Sununu in New Hampshire are behind by more than the margin of error, and have a slim shot at holding on.
To get to 60, the Democrats would have to win Minnesota and Georgia. I think they will fall short in both. In two close races, both Norm Coleman in Minnesota and Gordon Smith in Oregon, despite moderate voting records, have been targeted with tens of millions in negative ads portraying them as Bush clones, the same strategy the Obama campaign has used to falsely tar John McCain with $300 million in ads. In the case of Franken, his entire campaign has been a savage smear job against Coleman, and Franken’s election to the Senate, were it to occur, would make Minnesota even more of a national laughing stock that when it elected Jesse Ventura governor.
Richard Baehr is chief political correspondent of American Thinker.
