If you don’t want to be glued to the tube, I’ve learned from Luana of a good site to see the election returns in real time—that is, if you’re a fanatic about these things. It’s called 270towin, and shows a map giving votes in the states as they come in, and, at the same time, the latest Electoral College vote. For example, here’s what I see right now, a dead heat.
The color palette to the right tells you which states are considered safe, up for grabs, or (in tan) tossups when you click on them in real time.
When the count reaches 270, we have a winner. You can toggle back and forth between “live results” and “forecast”.
Feel free to blow off steam or elation below. It’s going to be a long night, and I have a feeling that the election won’t be settled when I wake up tomorrow.
The given https://www.270towin.com link doesn’t go to a _results_ map; it goes to an _interactive_ map where you can flip the poll-predected outcomes for a state to whatever you think will be the outcome.
They do have a live results page here:
https://www.270towin.com/2024-election-results-live/president/
You can flip between Forecast and Live Results using the buttons. And note that there are links at the top of the page for Senate and House live results as well.
A similar site for checking poll-based predictions is https://www.racetothewh.com/president/2024 although I don’t see that it has live results.
Google has live results if you search for “presidential election results map”: https://www.google.com/search?q=presidential+election+results+map
You can see on that Google results page other new outlets have maps ready. The large news organizations have statisticians on staff to “call” races; so different sites may have different results at any moment or sooner or later than others.
Note though that it’s not a timed race. We’ll only know the result after the last determinative votes are counted; there’s no ‘who’s leading at the moment’. While it’s expected that states will generally faster to count mail-in ballots than they were in 2020, there may be states whose results aren’t known for days. Pennsylvania, for example, won’t start counting any ballots until after their polling locations close.
Yes, I’ve fixed that, thanks. And thanks for the other links!
Interesting how Nebraska (5 electoral votes) keeps blue Omaha separate from the rest of the red state. That probably won’t last after this election, unfortunately. I see Maine is doing something similar.
I wonder how this sort of parsing of ec votes would effect things if it were done more widely, with blue portions of states separating from red portions.
My steam: MN is a battleground state, but already turned blue on the “consensus map.” If they do that, 270towin should turn GA red out of fairness.
That makes it 246 Red, 226 Blue, with five battleground states remaining.
Map was wrong; I’ve replaced it with the accurate one!
Note that while there might be 270 to win, the number of Electoral votes is in no way a fixed quantity.
There’s a nifty table under “Chronological table” here:
(URL free link keywords : wikipedia United States Electoral College)
Looks like it is at peak of 538 since the 1964 election, and only decreased once or twice by just a few (do not quote me on that)… 1900->1904 went down by one…
So I wonder now about 270 (being half of 540, etc…)
Blowing off steam, aye.
Perhaps other readers here have received several mailings bloviating the following refrain:
“REMEMBER, WHO YOU VOTE FOR IS PRIVATE, BUT WHETHER OR NOT YOU VOTED IS PUBLIC RECORD.”
Another mailing states: “We will be reviewing public records after the election to determine whether or not you voted, and may call you to discuss your voting experience . . . .” {I.e., press you to justify your voting decision.)
What – are you going to “tell on” me to my neighbors or whomever??
At our abode we have gotten several of these missives, and I’m sick to the back teeth of the breath-taking sense of entitlement motivating them. As if we are duty bound to dutifully and obediently account to these folks for whether (and, the truth be known, no doubt HOW) we voted.
For the record, we have voted. I gather that these intrusive outfits are non-profits and are obligated to submit certain reports to state and federal governments no less available to the public. Just as they scrutinize me, I have no less a right to ask them whether they voted, and to otherwise scrutinize and presume to impose requirements on them.
My guess is that these are Russian bots.
I hate the current drib-drab approach of reporting results. I have long held that no results should be releasable to the public until well after the last polls have closed anywhere in the country. Then release all the numbers at once. What’s the rush? It just turns elections into spectator sports and encourages pundits to call a state with 0% of the vote reported.
If you look at the percentage of votes that are reported to be “in”, you can calculate how many votes are yet to be counted. As I write, for several states that have been called that number is greater than the difference between the top two vote-getters! Now, if you know which counties those votes are coming from you may have a pretty good idea of how they will break out. But we don’t decide elections based on a statistician’s predictions, we decide them by counting votes. Until it is numerically impossible for the second-place candidate to catch up, an election should not be called.