US Vote: Irvine Welsh’s Election Day Diary

Our man in Chicago

Writing exclusively for Bella Caledonia author Irvine Welsh gives a running commentary  from Chicago as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney slug it out in a closely run contest to be come the 45th President of the US.

10.19pm (Central Time)

CNN project Obama win. Romney toast.

5.46pm (Central Time)

Important breaking news: Romney’s own polls show him trailing in Ohio. They’ve been very bullish about that state. If Obama wins this it will be hard for Romney to win electoral college.

5.40pm (Central Time) 

Still the same hot air and straw-clutching from pundits on both sides, extrapolating triumphalist scenarios from shreds of isolated data. It’s clear that it’s going to be a long shift and nothing will be apparent for hours yet, probably midnight ET.

So I’m going out for some food.

4.02pm (Central Time)

Seems voters working tactically, with bigger turnout in swings states and more low key elsewhere. Pundits making a big thing about Virginia, because in composition it’s pretty much representative of the USA as a whole.

Turnout up there and up in Iowa, another key state. Both parties claiming success as is the usual shite.

Astonishingly, in the self-styled ‘greatest democracy in the world’ there is evidence of corruption and sheer incompetence that any Middle eastern dictatorship voting for the first time would laugh at. Obama is listed as a Republican on one county ballot (as is Romney) and on another in PA a software ‘quirk’  means an Obama vote is counted as vote for Romney.

The federal government has to take this away from corrupt local states and their shady deals with software businesses. They need to set up a national electoral commission so that people vote in exactly the same way across the country.

First exit polls in an hour.

9.47 am (Central Time)

Morning pundits waffling the same pish, outlining all the scenarios whereby one candidate or the other can win. Everybody predicting close race, with narrow Obama win, as too many things have to go right for Romney in all the marginal states to get the electoral college votes.

Fox pundits still peddling the Republican wet dream of a 1980 Reaganesque landslide, which has hasn’t been detectable the ether, but which Romney’s folksy strategy is based upon.

Polls close at 7.00pm ish eastern time. Not a lot will happen until then, bar the same old hot air.

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  1. “Obama is listed as a Republican on one county ballot (as is Romney) and on another”

    Irvine, the American Constitution is ‘Republican’; ostensibly, all candidates are ‘Republican’.

    Where did you say you lived?

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