Yes we can

November 6, 2008

Finally, after what seems like an eternity in campaigning, debates and advertising, the election is over.  I’m not going to write about my political views (although if you know me, you know exactly what side of this fence I sit on), but I will say one thing – the feeling in the USA at the moment is exactly that of in 1997 when "New Labour" won the general election in a landslide from the conversitive party.  The country really needed a change and was excited about the potential future.  I really hope that it works out better here than it did in the UK (and I think in many ways it will – Obama is a smart guy and appears to really do want to bring about the change that the people need).

So, political views aside, what did I find interesting about the election.

First off, I was tracking the polls, etc using two sites – electoral-vote.com and fivethirtyeight.com.  IT’s pointless trying to track one poll, but both these sides aggregated data and did their own forecasts.  Generally, both were pretty accurate, but fivethirtyeight was right on the money – even calling what to look for in the first few hours of the polling offices closing.  Great job guys.

New technology was everywhere in the coverage – from MSNBC using Microsoft’s Surface to CNNs "hologram" (which I must say I thought was pretty poor, and all I wanted to say was "help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope).  Lots of HD studios though which looked really good on my big screen

A good friend of mine, Jon Pincus was doing his best to make sure that all voting counts (amongst other things, the activist that he is), which despite the usual problems doesn’t seem to have been nearly the issue it was in 2000/2004.  I don’t think things are "better" per se (I still have the belief that the UN should be call in to oversee the elections here sometimes as it can be pretty bad/partisan), but it was so clear what the outcome was going to be I don’t think it mattered as much as in other (closer) years.

The only other thing that I’m tracking is that Newsweek had reporters embedded into the campaigns, seeing how things went and having unprecedented access on the condition that they were embargoed until after the election.  There’s certainly some interesting news coming out of there from hackers (no surprise really – I don’t even think it’s worth more of a comment it’s that prevalent) to insider thoughts about the candidates, VP’s, and general strategies.  I’m certainly going to be tuning back in and looking out for more.

Posted in Misc