08 US Elections: Historic in Every Sense

The polls in America have just closed about minutes ago and early returns have already been released. Soon after, within 24 hours or so, we would know the result of what many see as a very historic vote and unprecedented in every sense. For one, it is already as the first African-American in Senator Barack Hussein Obama has been nominated to be a presidential spearheader of a major political party over there.

The New York Times describe this exercise in this manner:

“It has rewritten the rules on how to reach voters, raise money, organize supporters, manage the news media, track and mold public opinion, and wage — and withstand — political attacks, including many carried by blogs that did not exist four years ago. It has challenged the consensus view of the American electoral battleground, suggesting that Democrats can at a minimum be competitive in states and regions that had long been Republican strongholds.”

While a Bush adviser, Mark McKinnon emphasizes the innovations, where Internet had played a major role in carving the bursting and even celebratory scenario of this year’s elections over there in America:

“I think we’ll be analyzing this election for years as a seminal, transformative race,” said Mark McKinnon, a senior adviser to President Bush’s campaigns in 2000 and 2004. “The year campaigns leveraged the Internet in ways never imagined. The year we went to warp speed. The year the paradigm got turned upside down and truly became bottom up instead of top down.”

Rules have been changed. Voting in America, or perhaps in every other nook in the world, would shift forever, never to look back.

So what are your predictions? More or less, mine is just the same as yours—- It’s gonna be Sen. Obama by a considerable margin although early results shows Sen.John McCain leading considerably, where Yahoo! News have opined that early results could foretell the outcome of the entire vote.

Polls have put Sen. Obama up ahead by at least 7 percentage point margin and that’s a huge lead, considering margin of errors could merely be as high as plus or minus 2 percent. But polls are polls. It couldn’t be held as cardinal truth.

In 1948, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey was heavily predicted by the Gallup Polls to win over the then running incumbent President Harry S. Truman and New York Times had already carried the famous or infamous headline “Dewey Defeats Truman”. But when the smoke had cleared, the results were on the contrary and Truman became president once again despite the lack of support from the major dailies in America and the poll drawback.

In 2000, Sen. Al Gore was a very strong contender even garnering the most number of votes that year. But this very strong run was stymied by President George W. Bush’s winning more Electoral College votes with the key Florida win. It was a heartbreak lost for Gore and an almost miracle win for Bush, when we all thought Al Gore was so poised to become the man in the White House. But it wasn’t to be.

Would Sen. John McCain do a similar “Truman Surprise”, a come-from-behind maneuver? A major upset for the ages?

We’ll know just hours from now.