Fine -- let the Dems think things are going great. So great, they should probably start celebrating now and not go out to vote.

LOL

Umm, that might not be why his ass is on fire...

C'mon now, I didn't make the joke as an allusion to his sexuality.

I think I need a politics support meeting. I felt good this morning and now I'm feeling stressed out. I have blog-addiction symptoms. I can't stop visiting blogs for the latest news and reloading. My mind will NOT allow me to go to CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC to check the news (for fear of their slants). If Bush loses I will have lost faith in my countrymen/women and our troops (supporting Bush at 73%) will be down in the dumps. All I can do now is vote and hope.

Bush supporters (I'm one) are relieved to see that the early exit polls were 59% to 41% women, but I thought women were supporting Bush this campaign. How about it Bill. Don't worry, I already voted. Just trying to decide whether to panic or also feel relieved.

I don't think anyone should be concerned about the early returns. After all, conservatives work for a living. They'll be voting later. So, no worries. Keep yer head up.

Bush supporters (I'm one) are relieved to see that the early exit polls were 59% to 41% women, but I thought women were supporting Bush this campaign.

No, Kerry has a lead among women, but it's not the 11-point lead that Gore had in 2000. Bush maintains a large lead among men. So if the exits are skewed towards the women that voted, it's good news, as the numbers will even out as the distribution among the sexes evens out.

I'm not letting myself get stressed out minute-by-minute. These numbers are next to meaningless, and anyone that bases their decision not to vote on despondence is a fool.

Things will clear up late tonight, not at 3 PM.

I like Andy, and keep striving to give him the benefit of the doubt. He's not making it easy. His smackdown of KJL on The Corner was unseemly, to say the least.

Not Bill, but my understanding is that women were, at minimum, Kerry +2, so a roughly 60/40 female / male ratio would definitely exaggerate Kerry's strength.

Hey Bill, you can have the money I used to send to Sullivan, too.

This is all expected of Sullivan. Once you go down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny...

I'm with kathleen A - need a support group....how can I get any work done today?...must...not...blog....leaving...now....
God Bless "W"

Thanks for the replies. I AM stressed out and I have not had a cup of coffee yet.
I was pleased to be ID-ed at the polls and told the election people that. It was based on my having a recent address change, so at least some Dems (in my town) are giving a nonpartisan effort to keep it clean.

Whoah - Sullivan took the poll numbers down, and posted a tacit admission that HE is influencing people's voting patterns. Yet no apology to The Corner? Tasteless, Andrew. Tasteless.

Every time I see something from this latest version of Andrew Sullivan, I'm embarrassed with myself for ever having taken him seriously. What a sick joke that guy's become.

The ass burning is a reference to orbiting objects getting really hot as they slow down upon reentry. Into the atmosphere.

Anyone notice what the stock market did when that exit poll was posted? The bottom fell out. Probably not coincidence.

*** When you switch sides, does that mean you're forced to act like a condescending jerk? Is it in the manual?

Ummmmm, some of us think he was like that even _before_ he "switched sides."

--Rick Taylor

Amen on Sullivan. Of all the liberal hawks to jump to Kerry, why is he the only one acting like an indymedia asshole? _Nobody_ is that pumped for Kerry, so I can only conclude it stems from hatred of Bush. So much for the realpolitic choice he claims he made.

Look the reality is everyone who is emailing the Corner or whoever (or posting on this blog) needs to get a grip (I'm having a split-personality on this today). You still should vote the way you were going to vote. If WE were going to listen to POLLS and PUNDITS about other things (like Iraq, Afghanistan) we would all be rocking back and forth talking to ourselves by now. JUST VOTE. IGNORE THE POLLS. THEY DON'T MEAN SH*T until tonight. THEN we can rock back and forth and talk to ourselves. VOTE VOTE VOTE!

I stopped caring about what that drama queen had to say long ago. Plus he's not even an American citizen.

Keep in mind the exit polls also do not include those like myself who voted last week and also have been hanging up on pollsters when they call my home.

Still worried though....guess I picked the wrong day to quit drinking and smoking !

Sorry, I just wanted to be sure that last post was clear. I don't think Andrew Sullivan's personality has changed; he's always been arrogant and condescending. But his positions have changed, so he's now ticking off a different set of people.

--Rick Taylor

Hahaha, the ferret ROCKS! I had forgotten to change my "FERRETS 2004" Calendar to November. It's now been turned. :)

With that sample (59% women, 41% men), and assuming the women in it are pro-Bush 45%, and the men are evenly split (50%), the combined exit percentage would be 52.9%-Kerry, 47.1%-Bush. The sample is heavily weighted (nearly 2:1) to women.

The formula for the Bush percentage is:

[(female sample rate * female pro_bush rate) + (male sample rate * male pro_bush rate)] * 100

Example:

[(.59 * .45) + (.41 * .50)]*100 = 47.05

To get the Kerry percentage, subtract the Bush percentage from 100.

Almost completely off topic (maybe thats a good thing for our brains right now), but I am thinking about getting a ferret as a pet. Any body out there have any advice?

Thanks.

Litter train them hard, the right way, immediately - and have patience.

They can get annoying with repetitive attempts to bust out of whatever space they're confined to (house, apartment), but they're the funnest pets on the planet.

David -

What's the sample size, how was it taken?

Exactly. These numbers don't mean anything yet. In addition, men are not evenly split - last I heard, Bush had a double-digit national lead among men.

Bill,

Yes, the sample size, how it's taken, and its consistency with the overall electorate all matter too. So does the veracity of the respondent.

My purpose was to demonstrate the mathematical effect of the 59/41 skew and provide a formula for others to reassure themselves. Unless women will comprise 59% of all voters, those numbers are pointless.

Now, coincidentally, I performed a gender-balanced exit poll this morning. With a total of 2 respondents, Bush was leading 100-0%. Considering these two votes were in a strong Democratic precinct, I'm very encouraged.

;)

Ha! Exactly.

In related news, if you believe in the inevitable Bush victory, Bush contracts are down 17 points (to 36) in the last hour or so at tradesports.com. Every dollar at this price turns into $2.78 when he wins.

And they were up wildly earlier. They are probably moving on Drudge's dumb reporting of the exits, as it seems the REAL stockmarket did (according to Reuters).

Truth be told, I have no idea what to believe. So I'ma just look at the ferret and wait.

Bill, ass flaming has nothing to do with one's sexuality and I am appalled that you would think I should be so crass. I ate this taco once.....

wondering if anyone saw the video clip of kerry voting, as the woman standing next to him as he filled out the ballot had a kerry/edwards sticker on her left arm. isn't that a little on the illegal side?

Tradesports contracts are less than useless. It's been clearly established that someone (or several someones) have been manipulating the electoral futures markets since the media began hyping them as potential predictors. That's why you saw the Bush contracts go from 55 to 10 to 55 in one day after debates 2 and 3. If you have money to burn, it'd be pretty easy to drive the price of the Bush contract down quickly in the short term in a relatively small market, but the downturns are corrected quickly as traders snap up $10 contracts. Problem now of course is that there's no time for the market to correct fully.

I need that bottle of whiskey, but I can't go get it until 8 pm.

Bill, thanks for the info.

One further question, if I may. What happens if/when the ferret does get outside? Will they eventually come back? I live in the woods on a mountain side, with no other houses around for 500 yards in any direction. I am wondering if they would just keep running, or hang around near the house. I live in a log house, with lots of nooks and crannies for them to get into too. I am sure they would have a blast.

One of the reasons I am checking them out is that I have a serious flying squirrel problem in my attic. One exterminator recommended that I get a ferret, because apparantley the squirrels are terrified of them, and the scent of a ferret in the house will supposedly send them packing. My wife and I are both animal lovers, and we're currently between pets, so we are thinking about giving it a try.

Thanks again, and sorry to clutter things up....

Sullivan is well suited to his chosen roll as Kerry's peg boy. His feigned "conservatism" is as inauthentic as Kerry's phony medals. The Left can have him and good riddance.

I haven't sweated one like this since I was a little kid and my parents let me stay up late for the Kennedy-Nixon contest. Of course, I fell asleep anyway and had to wait until the next morning for the results.

Aw hell, there goes my manicure.

Sammi,

And may he be Arianna Huffington's second.

What's most irritating about these exits is that Drudge mindlessly left them up at the top of his page for so long with little or no qualification. It's not as bad now, but he's still got them up there. Experienced Drudge watchers know that "trust but verify" is the key to reading his scoops. I would think he'd know when he's being spun. The numbers are so far removed from the tracking polls as to smack of disinformation.

jmaster -

What happens if/when the ferret does get outside?

Sayonora, likely. You have to ferret-proof the nooks and crannies somehow. They'll get so curious outside that they'll prolly just keep going unil they get eaten.

Fred, the Bush contract market will correct fully when the election is over. When Bush wins, the contract will automatically rise to 100. The corresponding Kerry contract will be 0.

Yes, market manipulation is possible, and has probably occured, but the whole market is not shot and one must LOSE money to manipulate it down against a winning contract. Even a wealthly idiot like Soros isn't going to throw money away on it forever.

- FOX is bragging that they've increased their polling standard from 1 in 250 to 1 in 300 that they could be in error. Just a sentence before the twit said....."Well the exit poll starts with some initial data and then as "real" data is gathered from voting sites the poll is updated. Thats a whole lot better. 1 in 300 of bogus data is a BIG improvement. Oh...He just admited the prob in 2000 was the panhandle data wasn't included till much later than normal...Hmmmm....missing data just "happened" to be very heavily favored for conservatives.... Double Hmmmmm....Well that won't work this time.....they'll have to come up with a new twist.....Forget any exit junk period....In the end its the EC and actual vote that counts.....The polls....all of them... are simply to give us all somthing to do besides scratching our butts while we wait for the real results to stagger, linp, crawl across the finish line....In other news (hold down the rauchus cheering) Arafat ain't coming back.....

More ferret advice:

Get 'em fixed and descented, especially the males - they're stinky, otherwise. And unless you're a breeder, you have to fix the females, or they'll get sick and almost invariably die.

Get one of those big-ass cages, with multiple levels and ladders and such, and buy a pile of the fabric tubes and bags. They love that stuff.

They're awesome pets.

More ferret stories later.

Thanks to all for the non-election info.

Now, back to the race!!!!!!

Its going to be Bush by the way. Not even very close.

Bill, please personally thank Andrew Sullivan for me. His insistence on the whole gay marriage thing put the issue on the Ohio ballot and won the election for the President. Cheers.