According to the infamous Mark Halperin et al. there will be no exit polls for any of the House races. Since he has said it repeatedly in his Drudge regurge, The Note, I am skeptical. Does anybody have reliable information on this question? And if he is correct why won't the MSM do exit polling for any House races?
Presumably there will be exit polling in the tight Senate races. Does anyone know where?
In the absence of exit polling, trends should be sought in reports from the early closing states.
Contrapositive ran a great story
http://contrapositive.blogspot.com/...
listing the ET closing times.
The networks aren't starting their coverage until around 10 so we will have to be cable-dependent until then. By 10 the trends should have been firmly established and they should have their story line for the evening.
Here are the times taken form their report with some of my own suggestions and questions:
ALL TIMES ARE EASTERN.
7:00
Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia.
Vermont and South Carolina should go Dem (Ind) and GOP respectively. Vermont is small and efficient enough to give quick tallies. If Sanders and Welch are not doing well in these returns, the night will not be a good one. There should be exit polling in Virginia so a projection should be out early. If Webb gets an early call, the night should be a pleasant one. The Indiana and Kentucky house races will take awhile to call. Can any one with on the ground knowledge of the returns blog and analyze those results?
7:30PM
Ohio and West Virginia.
Given the ballot shenanigans in Ohio it might be a long time before we get reliable House results. Brown and Strickland have built up enough of a lead so their races at least should be declared quickly. I would imagine that the networks would exit poll the Senate race. Capito in trouble in WV-02 would be a good early sign. Mollohan in trouble in WV-01 would be bad news.
8PM
Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania Tennessee, Texas.
By this time I would hope to get some hard results from the 7:00 PM closers to give some sense of the national trend, wave or no wave to be expected. Casey and Rendell in PA and Patrick in MA should be declared pretty quickly after closing time. TX-22, the ex-Delay district, will be a mess, with probably days of recounts and challenges. The House races and the CT and NJ Senate calls will take longer. Both of those Senate races will be difficult to exit poll. Though there should be an early call for Menendez.
8:30PM
Arkansas and North Carolina.
The expectation is a Demo state sweep in Arkansas and tight House races in NC 08: Rep. Hayes v. Kissell and
NC 11: Rep. Taylor v. Schuler, with Kissel the long-shot. A strong Schuler win would be a good sign for the evening. How long does NC take to count its ballots?
9PM
Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
By this point an early trend should have been established. The South Dakota abortion anti-referendum should yield some interesting analysis. If it crashes as the polls now suggest, that might be the high water mark for the extreme position. RI is small enough to come in with a quick result so if Whitehouse is doing well and there is exit polling the results should be known quickly. If the RI Republican primary reporting is anything to go on, the votes for the Chafee victory came in early and stayed that way consistently. How efficient are these other states in tallying their counts? CO-04 matching mad Marilyn Musgrave with the angel in Colorado, Angie Pacchione, should be tight. If CO-05 Fawcett against Lambert also remains too close to call, we should be in very good shape. However I suspect that it will be at least 60 to 90 minutes before we get useful results for those races. Anybody with local knowledge planning to blog them?
10PM
Iowa, Montana, Nevada and Utah.
Who knows how quickly vote counts come in for Montana and Iowa? I suspect that the Iowa results should be known within an hour of closing. How long did it take for Burns to pull out his victory 6 years ago?
11PM
California, Hawaii, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon and Washington.
I don't know if I will stay up late enough to see if Pombo, Doolittle, and Reichert get their just desserts. By 11 if the wave has not yet crashed as desired, we may have another two years of miserable failure.