Election Returns Website

October 31, 2004 7:50 PM

What website should I be locked into on Tuesday night? I want raw data, real-time lists of media and VNS calls for various states, as well as info on Senate and House returns.
posted by PrinceValium to law & government (10 answers total)

hosted.ap.org is a good choice, but not all on one page.

I can't think of any that meet your criteria, actually, which is pretty ambitious. Look for the Votemaster to at least try, based on how much he has done this election cycle. Note that all sites will have some lag from the official results posted at each secretary of states' or election chiefs' web site.
posted by calwatch at 7:56 PM on October 31, 2004

Everyone will have results. They'll be fighting each other to have the most interactive and accessible resources. I plan to surround myself with the computer, the cable, and about three pounds of take-out Chinese and enjoy bits and pieces of all three.

Note however there will be no VNS calls for states, Prez-wise, during the evening. They will not do so until one candidate is confirmed to have over 270, in order to prevent Ohio's results from affected the last two hours of California, etc. However, I am assuming local races will be called, in which case both the major nets and local sources will have updated results.

I find it very likely that Election night may be second only to the Super Bowl in terms of ratings this year, as such, I think a harder question would be what you could watch to avoid it. Let your cat walk across the keyboard, put .com after it, and odds are it'll be a website with election results.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 8:01 PM on October 31, 2004

me too this awesome question.

My plans so far involve Jon Stewart, pizza, and beer. Viv sez y'all can drop by, but bring beer, m'kay?
posted by mwhybark at 8:16 PM on October 31, 2004

I plan to have the Secretary of State websites for certain important states tabbed in my browser to look at the returns for the actual vote count. It came in handy in 2000 when the Florida count got closer and closer even after they had called it for Bush.
posted by gyc at 8:32 PM on October 31, 2004

Let your cat walk across the keyboard

at long last, 'XQUZYPHYR' explained!
posted by quonsar at 8:42 PM on October 31, 2004

I asked a similar question last week.
posted by gluechunk at 11:15 PM on October 31, 2004

oops, sorry gluechunk.
Looks like the AP wire is best, though i feel sadly unsatisfied.
posted by PrinceValium at 4:38 AM on November 1, 2004

For the record, VNS no longer exists. Exit polling this year is being done by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. (Here for more info, although it doesn't look like they'll actually be posting poll results at that site.)
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:00 AM on November 1, 2004

i was worried about this too, but the electoral-vote.com guy has just announced that he will stay up all night tomorrow and update his site in real time.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 8:46 AM on November 1, 2004

Here's CNN's template, which looks pretty good. Hopefully it will be updated quickly. I would like to track calls made by other media outlets, though.
posted by PrinceValium at 9:37 AM on November 1, 2004