What To Watch For Tonight: An Hour By Hour Guide To Returns

This is from the WSJ and the revolting John Fund. Nevertheless it's a good guide with some early indicators.

From the article:

Following the Election Returns
An hour-by-hour guide to tonight's results.

Tuesday, November 7, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

This year the networks say they are guarding their exit poll results as if they were crown jewels. The results will be delivered to a "quarantine room," access to which will be granted to only two staffers from each network and wire service, who must surrender all cell phones, BlackBerrys and similar devices before entering the room. Such precautions are designed to prevent preliminary results, often wrong in 2000 and 2004, from being posted on Web sites like the Drudge Report.

Only at 5 p.m. will the occupants of the quarantine room be allowed to reveal the exit polls to their bosses. The networks claim to have completely revamped their exit-poll methodology, which in 2004 had surveys in which the results, collected mostly by female graduate students, consistently favored Democrats. The changes will mean the networks will be slower to call the winners. That and the difficulty of adjusting for the large number of absentee ballots could mean a longer night than usual.

So how to make sense of things this election night? Don't feel obligated to listen to the endless analysis of the pundits (including me) on the networks. Consider turning down the TV to a whisper and either watching the crawl of actual returns on the bottom of the screen or monitoring them on the Internet at sites like RealClearPolitics.com.

Given that the longer election night might not suit everyone's bedtime, I've prepared an hour-by-hour guide to tonight's results to provide clues on how each major party is doing even if individual winners in races haven't been called. All times are Eastern. In a bow to tradition, we've listed states that went for George W. Bush two years ago in red and those that went for John Kerry in blue. The letters after state names indicate governor and senate races, with the incumbent party in the appropriate color (independents in black). For example, "California GS" indicates that the Golden State went for John Kerry in 2004 and has a governor's race with a Republican incumbent and a Senate race with a Democratic incumbent.

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http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110009204

apparent monopoly of erasable pencil exit polls but aren't there any independent, high caliber polls being done that can be examined online and not in corporate closets? This seems so absurd for anyone to be waiting breathless for the polls that have as their main concern not to be "embarrassed" by discrepancies. Even more this year it seems the polls must be adjusted to the "results" and the pretext script more carefully prepared.

I find is nauseating to grant them referee status at all, like tuning into the Miss America Pageant, only
crooked.

It is nauseating, but the value of this article has nothing to do with exit polls, but with real returns and the early bellweather races in IN and KY.

this is a good guide
thanks for posting