Erstellt am: 6. 11. 2012 - 10:50 Uhr

The Final Countdown

A few apples, a pen, a bit of paper and a calculator. Getting ready for the big election night in Washington.

The atmosphere in DC?

It's a bit like the night before Christmas here. You know something is going to be delivered, but are you going to like it when it gets dumped in front of you? In the shops, restaurants and bars, everyone is talking about the election. You hear the words "Romney", or "Obama", or "I've heard he's two points up" as you walk down the street. It's a soap-opera with all kinds of twists and turns, and it's coming to an end very, very soon.

How close is it going to be?

Well it is going to be tight and opinions are varied depending on who you are listening to. Fox News (!!!) is predicting huge wins for Romney, as conservatives such as Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin line up to praise the Republican candidate. I hate to burst their bubble too early, but you also have to take into account at least what some of the main pollsters are saying. I went down to the Pew Research Group early on Monday and they said, "Look, it's like this. Obama is scoring 50% and Romney is on 47%." Pew had the last 2 elections almost spot on so why should their predictions be so off the mark this time? Close to the Capitol Building, I popped in to Freedom Works, one of the main Tea Party groups who figured that the polling this time was all over the place and very inconsistent. Only a few more hours and I guess we'll see who's right.

What should you look out for?

Set your clock for 1am (Austria time) Wednesday. The swing state of Virginia will give us a taster of whose night it could be. Then 1.30am it's Ohio & 2am it's Florida and Pennsylvania. Whoever is wining at this stage is in a very good position. But if its dividing up equally then, wait til 3am for Colorado. At 4am we should know Nevada and that should tell us a clear winner.

What can go wrong?

Because things are so close in a couple of those swing states, we might have a disaster. Remember 12 years ago in 2000, Bush won Florida by around 530 votes and that was only finalised much later. Really close results could be challenged in the courts and then it's down to the lawyers, the Supreme Court and really the politicians themselves to ask: how long can we drag this madness out without declaring a winner!

Could it end up in a draw?

The Founding Fathers made the US election system the most complicated anywhere on the planet. Their lofty ideas may have worked centuries ago, but these are still the days of hanging chads and computer malfunctions. Basically, if a candidate wins a state, he picks up that state's electoral college votes. Each state has a different number of votes, based roughly on its population. The magic number is 270 electoral college votes. Whoever gets 270 becomes President. If both get 269, the House of Representatives chooses who will be President (which is likely to be controlled by the Republicans) and the Senate chooses who will be Vice-President (likely to be in the hands of the Democrats). So in the case of a tie, you'd have a President Romney and Vice President Biden.

Zzzzzzzz....

And on that note, I'm off to bed so that I can get some sleep now & draw strength for FM4's marathon of reporting live from our studio just a few blocks aways from the Whitehouse. Join Paul Brennan and myself from Washington DC and Robin Lee & Kate Farmer back in Vienna, trying to make sense of it all as the results roll in. Dave Dempsey is live blogging as well. Our coverage starts at 1am on Wednesday morning and we go through to the bitter end. Please, let's not have a repeat of 2000. I'd like to fly back to Vienna having retained a tiny bit of sanity!

For Tuesday's Reality Check I spoke to Scott Keeter of Pew Research about at the final opinion polls and how the day looks set to run:

...and although the polls are favouring Obama, Republicans are still hoping that things will stop their way when it comes down to it, according to conservative writer Matthew Continetti at the Washington Beacon: