by wildcherry on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 | News, World

Registration, Early Voting At Unprecedented Levels Forecasting Record Numbers At The Polls

Latest candidate polls by CNN

CNN) — Sen. John McCain arrived with a cadre of Secret Service agents at a Phoenix, Arizona, church to cast his ballot Tuesday in a historic election that pits the Arizona legislator against fellow Sen. Barack Obama.

Shortly before McCain cast his ballot at Albright United Methodist Church, his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, voted in the City Hall where she once served as mayor.

Palin voted quickly behind a red-white-and-blue curtain at the Wasilla, Alaska, City Hall, before stepping outside with her husband, Todd, to speak to reporters.

Asked if she voted for embattled Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who was convicted last week on corruption charges, Palin declined to divulge who she voted for.

“I don’t have to tell anybody who I voted for,” she told reporters with a smile.

Palin is scheduled to head for Phoenix, where she will join McCain to watch the election results roll in. Video Watch Palin step behind the curtain »

McCain is scheduled to make visits to Grand Junction, Colorado, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Colorado and New Mexico both voted for President Bush in 2004, but the latest polls have them leaning toward Obama.

Obama hit the polls earlier. He and his wife, Michelle, voted side by side at Shoesmith Elementary School in Chicago, Illinois, as their daughters Sasha and Malia looked on. The couple took about 20 minutes to complete their ballots. Full story here by CNN

Other places to get live result:

• Google’s 2008 Election Map:  One of the better data mashups on the Web that provides real-time results, sans opinion or commentary. Check out the big picture or dive into states for county-by-county results.

• The Associated Press: The AP is known for being on the front-lines of the data returns (they have stringers at every polling place in the country), and will be providing a continuous video stream starting at 7 p.m. EST. AP writers and editors will discuss returns, and you’ll get live reports from the presidential campaign headquarters.

• CBS News: Our sister site has a Campaign ‘08 home page with analysis from Jeff Greenfield about what states are likely to be the earliest reliable indicators of a victory by John McCain or Barack Obama. (They also provided those neat widgets to the right.)

• CNN: CNN’s website is great for rapid returns, and they’re usually reliable when it comes to calling states first (or telling you who has.) For local results, try CNN’s Your Races, which lets you monitor the outcome of local ballot measures. If you want to use your cell phone, check out CNN’s mobile election center, which features poll results, video, and breaking news alerts.

• The New York Times: Besides their fantastic interactive Election Day package, which includes an electoral map and a cool word cloud of readers’ one-word thoughts, the paper will be sending out text alerts with the outcomes for presidential, house, senate, and governors’ races.

• Slate: Apple iPhone users can download Slate’s new Poll Tracker ‘08 application, which uses data from Pollster.com to provide polling updates from each state and charts with voting patterns from previous elections.

• C-SPAN: The public cable service has been mentioned on this blog before, and their coverage will run throughout the night.

• Palm Beach Post: This battleground state’s newspapers are on high alert. The Palm Beach Post has aggregated Twitter reports from polling stations around the state.

• Local/State Web sites: For example, the California secretary of state’s MyVote site provides information for local results. Once polls close, some of these sites have county-by-county results for statewide offices, assembly races, and ballot measures.

• Electronic Frontier Foundation: Concerns with electronic voting machines? The ourvotelive.org Web site offers RSS feeds, raw text, and an embeddable widget to track potential e-voting and other voting problem.

LIVE COMMENTARY

• The blogosphere: Heavy hitters include Andrew Sullivan, Daily Kos, Little Green Footballs, and the not-quite-bloggy Real Clear Politics.com. Libertarians will enjoy Reason.com and perhaps econ-blogs including Cafe Hayek and Marginal Revolution. There’s also the groundbreaking fivethirtyeight.com, which upended the way we journalists analyze polling results.

• The Drudge Report: Infamous for having published exit polls before voting ended, it’s an “insider” place for the most sensational breaking news.

• YouTube and PBS: The two are jointly offering a “Video Your Vote” channel and encouraging voters to upload clips that are related to their voting experiences on November 4. You can sort by specific categories, including early voting, polling place problems, and voter intimidation.

• The Atlantic: Is Twittering commentary directly on their front page.

• Humor and satire: Check out at Comedy Central’s Indecision 2008 Blog, where staffers will be liveblogging all day; The Onion’s War for the White House; and Saturday Night Live’s election site.

• CNET: Our other sister site has a great 2008 Technology Voter Guide and a 2008 election roundup.

• Twitter: A huge aggregate of what everyone’s thinking in real-time on Twitter’s Election 2008. Then visualize it here at An Orange America.

• Student publications: Journalism schools around the country are buzzing with activity. Some, like the one at Columbia University, have portals to original reported local content.

Tags: cnn, early exit polls, early voting results, election live results, election results, exit poll results, exit polls, exit polls 2008, exit polls early voting, final election map, final electoral map, final electoral votes, fox news, Live Presidential Election Results, msnbc, poll closing time, poll results, popular vote, popular vote obama mccain, popular vote results, presidential election, presidential election 2008, presidential popular vote results, voting results