Ohio will tell us, and it'll tell us early this evening.
Polls in the Buckeye State will close at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, and the Ohio secretary of state’s office said counties are prepared to quickly post tallies from absentee and in-person early voting. A spokesman said those numbers should be available as early as 7:45 p.m. to 8 p.m.
What does that mean for those following at home?
Public polling leading up to Election Day has indicated that early voters in Ohio broke for Obama by large margins. That means we should expect the president to take an early and potentially sizable lead in the all-important battleground when the early-vote tally is posted.
The question will be just how far ahead Obama is as county election boards begin to post results from Election Day. Those returns are expected to favor Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
(If Romney is ahead after early votes are posted — or if the two are very close — there’s a good chance that Romney will win the state and its 18 electoral votes.) ...WaPo
___
Nate Silver posted this early in the a.m.
Mitt Romney has always had difficulty drawing a winning Electoral College hand. Even during his best period of polling, in the week or two after the first presidential debate in Denver, he never quite pulled ahead in the polling averages in Ohio and other states that would allow him to secure 270 electoral votes.Butthe most recent set of polls suggest another problem for Mr. Romney, whose momentum in the polls stalled out in mid-October. Instead, it is President Obama who is making gains.Among 12 national polls published on Monday, Mr. Obama led by an average of 1.6 percentage points. Perhaps more important is the trend in the surveys. On average, Mr. Obama gained 1.5 percentage points from the prior edition of the same polls, improving his standing in nine of the surveys while losing ground in just one. ...538
___
Where's the money going?
___
Of course, it ain't over 'til it's over. Nothing is.
The Northeast is now bracing for a potentially dangerous northeaster expected to bring rain, punishing winds and high tides that could add to the misery of residents still reeling from Hurricane Sandy and set back the restoration of power.
Forecasters are tracking a storm developing off the Southeast coast that is expected to make a turn northward and intensify on Tuesday before hitting the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern States by Wednesday, and continuing into Thursday. ...NYT
