Via CNN's You Call The Race flash tool. I have the electoral college as 374 Obama and 164 McCain. Like the 2007 Australian national elections where John Howard lost his seat over bad governance I think this will be a bloodbath with the Democrats getting comfortable, filibuster proof, majorities in the Senate and House. We will know by the end of the day.

5:09 PM MT [Mountain Time]: Polls are starting to close across the US.

5:38 PM MT: The New York Times has the best interactive map. It is showing county level data. Bit pointless watching it this early though as Indiana has 15% reporting while Virginia has 3%.

5:48 PM MT: The poll map early on.

6:22 PM MT: Lots of calling of states based on exit polls (presumably around the 3K-4K mark). The media such as CNN should just shut it and let the election develop rather than being first to call states. They have screwed up before, like in 2000, and the exit polls have been wrong, as in 2004, so seriously, enough. There is also the democratic implication in that many of the west coast states have not closed their polls yet and blindly calling states so early is bad procedure.

6:52 PM MT: The poll map as more and more results come in. Virginia is looking reddish, but it will be interesting to see if the more populous counties of Northern Virginia make the state purple or blue.

9:15 PM MT: Virginia has blued, as has Ohio, Pennsylvania is deep blue and Florida is slightly. North Carolina and Indiana are now neck-a-neck. I think it is safe to say America is looking at an Obama presidency.

4:15 AM MT: Virginia is blue with a 4% lead to Obama. North Carolina and Indiana are close races and barely blue. Arizona is strongly red while Nevada is strongly blue.

From the map above I got Arizona wrong, that appears to be the only one I missed on. Not bad.

The Congressional races are all Democratic pickups as well. This was expected. The 2008 elections have been a referendum on Bush's governance in the same way that the 2006 elections were a referendum on Bush/Hastert/Delay's governance. The Republican Party brand in America is now effectively broken as a democratic force and will probably remain so for the next ten years.

The main interest is now if the Democrats will get a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. This requires 60 Senators. There are still four toss up Senate races (at 4:00 am) with seats in Alaska, Minnesota, Oregan and Georgia so it is possible. But it appears the Republicans might win the Georgian Senate seat and leave the Democrats without a filibuster proof majority.

Virginia is of interest to me as up until November of last year I lived in Northern Virginia. It was my home for six years or so. I was all part of the changes occurring in Virginia as out of state skilled workers come into the northern areas of Virginia and work in the wider Washington DC telecommunications, government and defense industries. So it was interesting to watch Virginia start red during the night and slowly go blue as the northern county polling stations started adding to the state totals.

From a county map the state looks to be largely red. And it is. This is the difference between NoVA and RoVA as the schism is called. Where NoVA is Northern Virginia and RoVA is condescendingly known as the Rest Of Virginia.

In the suburbs tightly around DC the counties went to Obama by about 10% with difference between the northern counties and southern counties being population. Fairfax County has a population of 500,000 while Smyth County in the lower left of the state has a population of 16,000. This is why the northern counties controlled who the electoral college votes went to.

Heavy urbanization in modern American means a political lean to blue as a rule of thumb.

Some more data from the NY Times maps. This the voting by population bubbles. It makes it pretty obvious how the northern counties affect the voting outcomes.

And another map showing the shift. The almost uniform swing to the Democrats is more like a Westminster style election than a Washingtonian one.

This was an election of the Republican Party losing support almost uniformly across the nation.

Voting shifts via the NY Times electoral map (click on the button voting shifts on the left). The electoral strategy by the McCain campaign was a failure. Support was only increased in a tiny area and the prior level of support during the 2004 election was not maintained.

Bush is a far better campaigner that McCain, however, the incompetent governance under the Bush Administration meant that McCain was fighting an uphill battle with the broken Republican Party brand. Bush's near-term legacy is bringing Barack Obama to an easy Presidential election win.

This map shows the voting by county bubbles which breaks the counties out by population. This is a major to key to why so many states seemingly red in a county by county map ended up blue. Ironically Phoenix (Maricopa County) is one of the largest red counties in the nation.

I think it is a stretch to say the Republican Party has been reduced to a rural party; but they are definitely electorally repugnant to urban and major suburban centers.

The county cartogram for the 2008 election via Election Maps. But it is still largely a purple America.

The Electoral College is designed to give the executive greater legitimacy from its federal character by creating an obvious majority. Even the so-called blue states are very purple.

Another revisioning of the electoral landscape for the US election from Axis Maps.

Rather than a cartogram which warps the map based on population, this map tries to show the population data through color. So a bright blue segment of the map means strong support for Obama from a large number of people. It is a stunning map and an interesting way to try and deal with the third dimension of data.

More on the 2008 US Presidential Election:

• 2008 Election Cartogram
• Election Voting Shifts
• Virginia in the 2008 Presidential Election
• 2008 Presidential Election Prediction