Presidential election coverage sucks.
So like most every other American that knows what an election is, I was keeping tabs on our Presidential election for the year of 2008.
Before I go any farther, I should state that I was a political neutral. My stand on politics, and more specifically on this election, is that the winner was obviously the better candidate, and as long as they don't screw up too badly I had no preference as to who took the office. Not to say I didn't care who won, because obviously it's important, but I wasn't supporting nor attacking either candidate.
Now that I've said that...Like I said, I was keeping tabs on the election results. I had the CNN page up on my computer and the live Associated Press video stream running for a while (before I figured out the CNN stream updated faster and switched to that).
I couldn't help but notice that for most states, the moment the polls would close, it would be declared a victory for Obama. As in, it's 8:01, I'm holding the mouse over CNN's interactive map, over the state of, say, California, and even though the count they had was at zero votes a piece, the state was blue. Same with states like Connecticut, and Massachusetts, and most every other east cost state.
Sometimes I saw an Obama state even though they had McCain ahead in the votes. Maine was a particularly interesting state.
Ok, seriously? First you have Obama winning the state based on three votes. Then you still have Obama winning even though McCain is ahead in votes? I understand if there was a lot of Obama support in a lot of states, but at least wait longer than that before declaring a state a win. Even MSNBC sucked:
So much for patience....
Before I go any farther, I should state that I was a political neutral. My stand on politics, and more specifically on this election, is that the winner was obviously the better candidate, and as long as they don't screw up too badly I had no preference as to who took the office. Not to say I didn't care who won, because obviously it's important, but I wasn't supporting nor attacking either candidate.
Now that I've said that...Like I said, I was keeping tabs on the election results. I had the CNN page up on my computer and the live Associated Press video stream running for a while (before I figured out the CNN stream updated faster and switched to that).
I couldn't help but notice that for most states, the moment the polls would close, it would be declared a victory for Obama. As in, it's 8:01, I'm holding the mouse over CNN's interactive map, over the state of, say, California, and even though the count they had was at zero votes a piece, the state was blue. Same with states like Connecticut, and Massachusetts, and most every other east cost state.
Sometimes I saw an Obama state even though they had McCain ahead in the votes. Maine was a particularly interesting state.
Ok, seriously? First you have Obama winning the state based on three votes. Then you still have Obama winning even though McCain is ahead in votes? I understand if there was a lot of Obama support in a lot of states, but at least wait longer than that before declaring a state a win. Even MSNBC sucked:
So much for patience....
Posted by a huge chunk of string beans at dinner last night.
1 Comments:
The news outlets are reporting teh actual vote totals as they come in, but they aare calling the states based on "exit polls", or polls taken of voters right after they vote. They can only announce the polls after teh state's polls are closed. This is because in 1980, the networks declared Reagan the winner before many of the state's polls had closed. Anyway, tehy are reporting who they will think will win teh election ratehr athn who won the vote total. This system has only failed once: in Florida, in 2000. (Of course.)
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