The first exit polls are in for the states where the polls have closed. So far the results are mixed.  The tables below show the sata so far. Data from MSNBC.

NOTABLE TRENDS

Two trends are notable in the early exit poll data–the turnout for Latinos and African Americans is lower than expected. the Latino turnout in most of the toss-up states is lower than their percent of the population. African American turnout is about the same is their percentage of the population or lower.

On the positive side women voters are turning out at higher numbers than men.

The youth vote is turning out is several key states.

ANALYSIS
The low African American turnout so far in Florida and Virginia is a concern. In Florida I would attribute it to the same voting snafus that have taken place in the last two elections.

Right now based on these preliminary data it looks like North Carolina will probably go for Obama. The high turnout by young voters, African Americans, and women is encouraging.

I would place Virginia second, but it will take more African American voters to pull that one out.

As for Florida and Indiana we will have to wait to see what the real African American turnout before we can say anything about those states.

The final pieces are the numbers of college-educated voters, which should favor Obama and the fact that people living below the overty level are voting at least at their percentage of the population. If these swing states are close, they could be the difference.

You will notice I have not data on union voters. For some reason the exit polls I have seen do not ask that.

CNN just projected Georgia for McCain.  As mentioned I will make no calls before the West Coast.

They just projected Ohio.

THE WINNER

Right now I am ready to project a Presidential winner, but I will not violate my California pledge. Those voters deserve to vote without knowing the results. Anyway there is no way now the other candidate can win. This one will be over early.

There is an interesting issue now to consider: if the networks continue to project East Coast and Middle West states and knowing that 7 out of ten of the toss-up states are in those regions, any idiot should be able to project the winner before California is finished voting. The networks should NOT be allowed to project ANY state until ALL states have voted.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT

There are states where there are important state races still at stake, especially with the Democrats trying to get a veto proof majority. If the networks essentially tell us the Presidential winner before these states have finished voting it could influence turnout and perhaps change some of those races.

A REAL DILEMMA

I could call some of the toss-up states now as well as the Presidential winner, but I do not feel it is right. A friend walked in the door and just said one of the local radio stations has already named the Presidential winner. I won’t say who.  So what to do?

I suspect as I write this there are bloggers who probably have announced the winner.

So the question is whether to keep blogging tonight? Actually the choice is easy. The emphasis here has never been on the horse race but on the whys, so when the polls do close on the West Coast, I can begin to give you some analysis to explain why.

THE NETWORKS MAKE THE CALL

You almost want to take a deep breath when you realize that America has elected its first African American President. This will be one of those moments every one of us will remember all our lives so our children will ask what were you doing when Barack Obama was elected President.

It was within my lifetime that a sharecropper named Fannie Lou Hamer could say:

I didn’t know that a Negro could register and vote.

When she went to try to register to vote they asked her to read and interpret a section of the Mississippi Constitution as part of the state’s “literacy law” requirement. Later when she was out trying to register others to vote she was jailed brutally beaten:

Three white men came into my room. One was a state highway policeman (he had the marking on his sleeve)… They said they were going to make me wish I was dead. They made me lay down on my face and they ordered two Negro prisoners to beat me with a blackjack. That was unbearable. The first prisoner beat me until he was exhausted, then the second Negro began to beat me. I had polio when I was about six years old. I was limp. I was holding my hands behind me to protect my weak side. I began to work my feet. My dress pulled up and I tried to smooth it down. One of the policemen walked over and raised my dress as high as he could. They beat me until my body was hard, ’til I couldn’t bend my fingers or get up when they told me to. That’s how I got this blood clot in my eye ‑ the sight’s nearly gone now. My kidney was injured from the blows they gave me on the back.

When they asked her why she kept organizing she answered:

I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.

It was Hamer who helped to organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and tried to convince the Democrats that African Americans should not merely allowed to vote, but could form a potent political force. But not even Hamer could have imagined this evening.

Like Hamer, Barack Obama came from a humble background and now has achieved the highest office in the land. That this genius came from a man raised by a single mother, demonstrates, as Hamer did, a fundamental liberal principle: a level playing field will produce uncommon people, because you never know when someone will seize the tattered threads they have been given and weave them into something singular.

Right now throughout America there are African Americans who like Fannie Lou Hamer and thousands of others risked their lives just so African Americans could vote as those people are truly the heroes of tonight, for each of them helped to make this night possible.

MCCAIN’S CONCESSION SPEECH

John McCain just gave one of the great concession speeches in American history. As negative as this campaign became, with the ugly specter of racism lurking on the edge of the stage, McCain needed to give a speech that would tone down those ill feelings and most of all make it clear that racism has no place in this America.

McCain talked about uniting America and pledged his support for the new President with trace of rancor. For this he is to be commended.

A TORCH HAS BEEN PASSED

If you look at the polling data for the various swing states, Obama brought out young voters and voters of color along with the old Democratic groups. There is in this the possibility of a new Democratic coalition, one reminiscent of the 1960 election or 1932 when the nation signaled it was time to take a new direction.

This nation is tired of the Era of Bad Feelings, tired of the old arguments between the parties about taxing and spending. In many ways Barack Obama’s campaign reminds me of William Jennings Bryan who depended for his support not on big money or party bosses but ordinary people. An unprecedented number of Americans sent in their contrubutions over the Internet, knocked on doors and did whatever they could to assure his election.

I have said that Obama has the ability to duplicate Woodrow Wilson’s feat of uniting the Democratic Party, but even more he has Ronald Reagan’s ability to go over the heads of the Washington establishment and get things done. The networks are asking, “Can Obama govern?” I believe those millions of people online will be a force to help him overcome that resistance just as Reagan had the ability to go directly to the people.

OBAMA’S SPEECH

He gave the speech in that stretch of park where four decades ago clouds of tear gas filled the air and blood lay in the streets as America seemed about to split apart at the seams. Looking down that park from his hotel room, Hubert Humphrey wondered about the nomination he had won. We were in an unpopular war then, just as we are now, and in the far corners of the country a cultural war raged.

Now on a warm November evening with a sliver of the moon glowing in the clear night sky, a black man stood on a platform in that same park, a row of flags fluttering behind him the way they do in the movies. In place of chants, shouts of protest, cries of pain and those stinging clouds that hung over them all as the police with their pig-snouted gas masks wielded their clubs, there were measured words.

“The whole world is watching,” they had shouted in 1968 and in 2008 the whole world was watching again, but this time it was listening with a different spirit. “Yes I can,” their lips moved in synchrony with his. Had Hubert Humphrey spoken those words in 1968 he might have been President and a lot of other might-have-beens would have occurred.

The words promised to bring America together again. The man who spoke them had been but a child the last time Democrats met in such numbers in Grant Park and now he would seek to heal wounds that went back even before that.

The words of the speech hung in the air as they echoed from the speakers while those who heard them stood transfixed as if watching verbal fireflies, their singular lights flickering in the darkness. They stood as people do who had witnessed a miracle, some with tears of joy, others with eyes enraptured, and a few for whom the weight of it all had begun to sink in so that even an old warrior like Jesse Jackson, the same Jesse Jackson who had stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel, carried an expression like someone who had survived an epochal struggle and lived to see victory.

He spoke of a century-old woman who had voted that day, then linked her story to America’s so once again the American Century lived. only this time with that rare combination of old meaning and new hope that make for a transformational moment.

Then I witnessed something I had never seen before: the people behind the cameras, the people in the trucks sending their signal up towards that sliver of moon and those back in the studio became as transfixed as those there in the park and the images just kept coming as if they did not want that moment to end.

Tagged with: African American voters • Barack Obama • election results • exit polls • female voters • John Mcain • latino voters • older voters • projections • younger voters