I Smell Blood...

Now I have said for some time that I had a good feeling about this election. At the least, there's a record turnout to keep us extremely happy.

We're still very close. But there's some really great signs out there. I've called all my people across the country and here's what I could get:

1. Kevin and Noel are hitting the pavement in New Hampshire. They started in Nashua where there was an expected volunteer base of 150. More than 300 showed up. So they are headed for Concord.

2. Still waiting on Slewis, but I have a feeling she's very busy out there in Michigan.

3. According to Fabs, Ohio is raining, but they are turning out at the polls. There was a wait of at least an hour in a predominantly Black neighborhoods with traditionally low turnout.

4. Mahoney's reports are good. Not only did she predict 7 points for the Kerry, she also said there was news on the ground that by noon today, Philadelphia had surpassed the voter turnout of ALL of Election Day 2000.

5. Andrew, Anne, David, and Lindsay are on the ground in Pennsylvania and they had to be turned away and reassigned to another volunteer location because they were at capacity.

6. Dougie says that Palm Beach has amazing turnout and that the lines were longer earlier in the week for early voting, but there's still a great amount of people waiting for at least half and hour to vote.

7. And out here in Iowa, one of the precincts had seen more than half of their voters by 9am. Another precinct predicted 300 to turnout. By 11am, they had surpassed that with 350. At a polling place I stopped by around 11:30, they usually had dismal turnout averaging around 30. By 11:30am, more than 130 had come to vote.

America is changing. People are paying attention and besides that, are actually doing something about it. And as of 4pm, here's how we looked (kudos to www.dailykos.com):

          NV  CO  NC  PA  OH  FL  MI  NM  WI
Kerry     48  46   49   54 50  50  51  50  51
Bush      50  53   51   45  49  49  47  48  46

In Florida, Bush has lost his commanding lead with Hispanic voters:
Hispanics

        2000   2004

Bush     65     53
Gore     35    
Kerry           46

Cuban-Americans

        2000  2004

Bush     82     68
Gore     17    
Kerry           32

From CNN:

Ohio - African American precincts are performing at 106% what we expected, based on historical numbers. Hispanic precincts are at 144% what we expected. Precincts that went for Gore are turning out 8% higher then those that went Bush in 2000. Democratic base precincts are performing 15% higher than GOP base precincts.

Florida - Dem base precincts are performing 14% better than Bush base precincts. In precincts that went for Gore, they are doing 6% better than those that went for Bush. African American precincts at 109%, Hispanic precincts at 106%.

Pennsylvania - African American precincts at 102% of expectations, Hispanics at 136% of expectations. The Gore precincts are doing 4 percent better than bush precincts.
 
Michigan - Democratic base precincts are 8% better tha

We are seeing some problems, but not as badly as we had feared. The concern is with the challenges. But if things keep going this way, we'll be cool. And we'll have our country back tomorrow.

KEEP GOING!