Nobody knows nothin'

We're finally in the home stretch! If you're reading The Daily Parker, that means you are literate in English, very good-looking, and already know it's Election Day in the US. And as in years past, I will report on the races I care about throughout the evening.

The first polls close at 5pm CST (23:00 UTC), in Indiana and Kentucky. Nobody expects anything surprising to come out of those states, so I may not jump right in there. The first interesting results will probably come in from Florida and Virginia after their polls close at 6pm CST (00:00 UTC), and after Ohio and North Carolina wrap up half an hour later.

At 7pm CST (01:00 UTC) we get a whole bunch of poll closings, including here in Illinois, Michigan, Kansas, Texas, and Maine. Will we know who won in any of those states? Well, I'm pretty sure the people I voted for in the Illinois Governor and Senate races, and in my Congressional district, will win handily.

Unfortunately, polls in Alaska, one of the states that could change control of the Senate, don't close until midnight CST (06:00 UTC). It's a close race, and the state uses ranked-choice voting, so we may not know who won there until next week.

Remember this, though: until we have actual vote counts, everyone is guessing. Some guesses are better than others, but only the official vote counts matter. (Here at The Daily Parker, we get our numbers from Car Talk's Statistician Emerita, Marge Innovera.)

Also, people don't always know why they voted the way they voted. By the Law of GIGO, that means pundits don't really know why people voted the way they voted, either. I fully expect lots of think-pieces during the week trying to explain the irrationality of 70 million Americans as somehow rooted in deep analytical rigor. People who pay close attention to politics have a well-known blindness around people who don't, because how could someone not spend all day thinking about the nuances of Haley Stevens' thought processes? (Hint: there was none. Not one single nuance. She fucked up, but it probably made no difference at all to most voters.)

So: enjoy the day, kiss your dog, go outside, vote if you are eligible and haven't yet voted, and come back tonight for some of the least-informed analysis online.