Wednesday, November 05, 2008

How did you sleep? Reflections on US elections 2008

I couldn't cope with the TV coverage on BBC1, so we quit to bed and had radio 4 on through the night.

I dozed through some of the sections, but was awake when things were getting interesting as some of the crucial states started to come through.

Hearing McCain's gracious concession speech - and the appalling boos that greeted mention of Obama not once but twice during it - and hearing Obama's own victory speech were special events indeed.

Yes, we hoped [this is a good piece with Professor Richard King from Nottingham University talking about Obama and the Democratic hopes he carries: it was produced a few days ahead of the election]. However, we also feared the impact of the queues, the voting problems with technology and claim/counter-claim for voters, and the dread we now have of pollsters getting things wrong.

In the end, all that was swept aside in a flurry of states opting to take their chance on the oratory and possibilities held forth by Obama.

To quote a phrase, "what's next?"

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks to a link from the Guardian, I settled my nerves on fivethirtyeight.com. That guy is a genius with stats and polls - he ran 10,000 simulations for every set of new polling data, and he ended up with a pretty accurate prediction.

JoeinVegas said...

We are all waiting to see what is ahead, especially after the stock market big down again today.

juramcleod said...

Actually, the lines were only in poplus states--here where i live, you only had to wait 5 minutes. We are also so suprised actually by how early McCain conceded--usually that happens at 1 or 2 in the morning--even in a huge defeat.