There seem to be 87,000 folks on the web providing detailed guides as to how to watch the election returns, telling you that if at 8:47 PM, five guys in Rhode Island are reported to have voted for the Sesame Street party, it's a good indicator of a landslide Cookie Monster vote tonight. Or whatever.
My prediction is that we will find that not one of those 87,000 forecasters will have accurately called that aspect of Election Night correctly. Voting machines will break somewhere. Court challenges somewhere will hold up the counting or reporting of some state or county. There will be delays that will never be explained. A vote this size — more of it mailed-in than ever before — is so unprecedented that something's got to go wrong. What if in some key state, there's a huge line waiting to vote when the polls there officially close?
I will further predict that no matter who you think is going to win, there will be some early report that makes you panic that they won't. And then that trend may or may not change.
I have two more predictions. One is that I will spend today working and trying to not pay attention to early, possibly meaningless returns and to predictions on TV by people who have no idea what's going to happen but since they're not paid to say that, they'll make predictions anyway.
And lastly, I predict that I will not succeed in not paying attention to the news until the meaningful returns begin arriving. But maybe I can get something done before that happens. Keep your spirits up. It could be a long night and it could include Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Thanksgiving, National Pearl Harbor Day of Remembrance…