America Votes...

The Washington Redskins lost last night.

I would be a lot more confident about the election tonight if the pattern hadn't been broken back in 2004.

I've been following FiveThirtyEight.com's' projections since the Primaries, when Nate Silver proved to be the most accurate predictor of the outcome of the state-by-state contests. His statistical methodology is incredibly messy, but it seems to work.

FiveThirtyEight.com is calling for a 349-189 electoral vote spread between Obama and McCain. If one doesn't weight the state-by-state projections and allocates all the electoral votes for those closely contested states to the candidate leading in the polling, we get a 353-185 spread. The probability of an Obama win is up at 98.9%, with Obama projected to take the popular vote by eight points. If the polling projections hold up, it's looking like a pretty overwhelming victory for Obama tonight.

I think it's going to be closer than that. The projections have both North Carolina and Florida leaning towards Obama, but by the final weighted polling has him up by only the slimmest of margins -- +1 in NC and +1.7 in FL. Both those states could easily flip, given that North Carolina hasn't gone Democrat since 1976, and Florida is just too damn full of old people. If both states go for McCain, we come in at 311-227. Still a solid win.

A lot of pundits are talking about Pennsylvania but, with a +8.1 lead in the weighted polling, I think that ship has sailed for McCain. If Obama loses Pennsylvania, he's in deep trouble. He needs one of Pennsylvania or Ohio and since he's only up a bit in Ohio (+3.4), if Pennsylvania falls into the McCain camp, I imagine it will come after Ohio's already been called for the McCain. On the flip side, I think that if Ohio calls for Obama, it's curtains for the Republicans.

Key states for Obama are Florida, North Carolina, Virginia and Ohio. If he even draws a split with McCain, he's golden.

As confident as I am of an Obama victory, I'm not celebrating until I see the electoral vote counter hit 270. There's no way I'm even thinking of calling this early, for fear of tempting the wrath of whatever from high atop the thing.*

Other non-Presidential elections I'm going to be watching for:

• Elizabeth Dole needs to go down.
• So does Ted Stevens.
• And they need to go commiserate somewhere with Michele Bachmann.
  
• Hopefully, an Obama victory is called early, suppressing conservative turnout in California, leading to a defeat of Prop. 8, the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
• The possibility of Ann Coulter's head exploding if the Democrats take the Presidency, the House and the Senate.
  

It's going to be fascinating.

I'll be glued to the television all night.

(And likely LiveBlogging to pass the time. I apologise in advance if the RSS feed gets flooded.)

*With apologies to Aaron Sorkin.