An enigmatic election

LITTLE ROCK — I suspect dominoes will begin toppling around 11 p.m.

Networks will dare at that hour to begin calling razor-close presidential outcomes in the East and Upper Midwest, in Florida, Virginia, New Hampshire, Ohio and Wisconsin.

If the presidential margins are similarly close either in North Carolina, where Mitt Romney is supposed to win, or Pennsylvania, where Barack Obama is supposed to win, then we will have a hint of a national outcome.

If the margins are narrow in both states, then we will have a typically and confoundingly mixed message.

One thing to remember this year, speaking of confoundingly mixed messages: Exit polls are dicier. All polls are dicier.

So many people have voted early in so many integral states-Ohio and Florida, mainly-that the Election Day exit survey is no longer defining.

That’s especially the case with early voting seeming to favor Obama but Election Day voting trending to Romney.

So the exit polls this year will encompass standard telephone polling, which has been more contradictory than ever in this campaign.

We have seen a rash of weighting of raw numbers, with pollsters adjusting their findings to achieve assumptions about party affiliation and likely voters and gender and race.

Some polls make human calls to cell phones as part of their mix-since automated calls to cell phones are illegal-but others don’t. Even when polls make calls to cell phones, those users are more likely to ignore the calls or hang up.

Some pollsters say only about 10 percent of their dialed numbers produce an interview.

Considering that a third of Americans use only cell phones, and that the percentage will grow to a majority in a decade, and that those users are younger with political attitudes different from other age groups, then we should add polling to the list of activities struggling to adjust to modern technological habits.

So I’m wondering if polling might not be a loser tonight. And if we can’t trust polls, then presidential candidates might be forced to campaign next time in more than a half-dozen states.

For the longest, I thought this presidential race resembled 2004, when John Kerry looked as if he would win narrowly based on Ohio polls, but then lost Ohio.

Then I decided that this race was a bigger mess than that and looked more like the debacle of 2000.

Now I’m back to wondering if it’s ’04 all over again-an out-of-touch rich guy from Massachusetts against a struggling incumbent, with turnout in Ohio the decider of the presidency.

On the question of whether the U.S. Senate stays in the Democrats’ control, look for early evening Democratic gains in Massachusetts with Elizabeth Warren and in Maine with liberal independent Angus King, an Obama supporter likely to caucus with Democrats.

Look for a potential bellwether in the Virginia race for a vacated Democratic seat between Tim Kaine, the Democrat, and George Allen, the Republican.

After that, look to Wisconsin, Indiana and-later in the evening-Montana.

For all our supposed disdain for congressional deadlock, we’re not likely to change Congress much today.

Now for real excitement: Will Republicans take advantage of the semi-anarchist Koch brothers’ money and the anti-Obama Republicanization of the state to achieve their first legislative majorities in Arkansas since Reconstruction?

Term limits gave us novices. Then came the Tea Party to give us novices and apocalyptic right-wing fanatics.

Now come the Koch brothers to give us novices, apocalyptic right wing fanatics and wholly owned subsidiaries.

The Republican legislative message is simple: Y’all hate Obama. So do we.

The Democrats’ legislative message is patchwork, since the Democratic Party of Arkansas hasn’t ever really needed to impose any discipline or stood for any cohesive philosophy.

In rural areas, the Arkansas Democratic message is that we’re different from Washington Democrats. In others, it’s Mike Beebe versus out-of-state interests. In urban areas, or mostly black ones, it’s that a vote for a Democrat for the House of Representatives is a vote for the first black speaker of the House, Darrin Williams.

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Note: Tomorrow morning’s online only column at arkansasonline.com will be written about 11 o’clock tonight, when we may, or may not, know something.

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John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com.