Internal Monologue

Dude, why did Lando pick Chewbacca as his running mate? Is Kashyyyk a swing planet? See more funny videos at Funny or Die

As you can see on the map below, polls close in the Eastern Time Zone parts of Indiana and Kentucky in 3 hours. For Indiana, this is most of the state, except that the key Gary area is in the Central Time Zone. Most networks will probably hold off calling Indiana for at least another hour because of this. Kentucky may get called early, since the major Obama support in that state is in Louisville and Lexington, which both are in the Eastern Time Zone. Since the whole state is going to go heavily for McCain anyway, the additionally McCain-leaning areas in the Central part of the state won't change the overall result. Kentucky will likely be the first state called.

Glenn Greenwald is not immune: Speaking of which, if things go tonight as expected, I highly recommend watching Fox News for some period of time. I spent Election Night 2006 with Fox News and this is what I wrote as I watched: I really highly recommend watching Fox News; it's like being at a wake for a person that you're really happy has died, but everyone else is in deep mourning. Charles Krauthammer. Bill Kristol. Brit Hume. Fred Barnes. Karl Rove -- it'll be like watching a carousel of criminals in deep psychic pain for hours without end.

Grishnash has all this information in his spreadsheet, but here it is in graphical format: For those of us on the west coast, a lot of key states will be closing their polls at 3 and 4 pm our time. As the results from those states come in, it could very well spell doom for McCain's chances quite early. But don't let that stop you from voting. My readers in California should know that there are some important ballot initiatives whose outcome may be affected by depressed turnout if the election is called early. Vote NO on California propositions 4 and 8.

When the continuous election coverage starts on the major networks, you can be sure they will talk about the "battleground" or "tossup" states (those where the polls show the candidates within the margin of error or about 5% or so) as being the ones to watch. But Internal Monologue readers will know that unless you've placed some bets on the individual state races, those are no longer the important ones. The states in this category this morning are: Arizona (Yes, Arizona!), Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, and Virginia. But even sweeping these states, and all the ones where he leads by more than 5% in polls only brings John McCain to 265 right now. The TRUE battleground states to watch carefully are those where Obama is leading in polls by about 5-12%. Those are: Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Those are the ones that will decide this race.

This is awesome:

As noted earlier fivethirtyeight.com now has the final poll results up. Almost everything tilts Obama's way here. In the final updates, only Indiana seems to be trending towards McCain at all. Even if you assume Obama's 6.1% lead nationwide is a figment of bad polling, it still looks good for him. Even losing every state where his lead is less than this (the tossups) still leaves him at 273 electoral votes. So here is my preliminary call: this race is now Obama's to lose. McCain needs to pick off at least one solid Obama state, in addition to all the tossups to win this. The only two that look really possible for Obama to maybe lose of the remaining states are Pennsylvania and Colorado. McCain needs at least one of those, or a total shocker.