The first exit poll leak has broken at the Daily Kos, and it looks good (showing a net gain of around 30 electoral college votes on the last prediction).
AZ CO LA PA OH FL MI NM MN WI IA NH
Kerry 45 48 42 60 52 51 51 50 58 52 49 57
Bush 55 51 57 40 48 48 47 48 40 43 49 41
Note especially the three big swing states – 20% up in Pennsylvania! and all three in positive territory. It would be a fine irony if the Margin of Error turned out to be between our perceptions of a close race and the landslide reality. Mind you, though, it’s still just a poll. The Mystery Pollster provides an excellent cautionary critique of exit polls, pointing out that these early, semi-official results might show a Margin of up to 7%. Hard-right sites like Free Republic have reportedly been pulling all posts that mention these figures, though. Touchy? Never…
In other news – a brief scare about the voting machines in Philadelphia has been debunked. Investigation revealed that the Republican complainants had confused a counter showing the total votes ever recorded on the machine with that showing the votes recorded this time. Didn’t keep Matt Drudge off it, though. The monster turnout stories seem to be increasingly borne out by witness accounts, though of course these are still anecdotal.