It Will Be All Right

Everything is going OK - it's not Florida 2000 time. There is no need to get unduly worried:

Yet beneath the energy and party atmosphere – with a crowd of 60,000 it was the biggest political rally in the history of Columbus – and the heady excitement that after this marathon campaign they had at last reached the cusp of history, many of these Ohioans were suffering a new mental condition on the eve of Election Day. It could be called “Victory Will Still Be Snatched From Us Compulsive Disorder”.

“I am so afraid some ghastly trick will be played again and we’ll wake up on Wednesday morning and we’ll be where we were in the last two elections,” said Stephanie Harper, 32, as she walked towards the rally with thousands of others. “My doctor says she is treating lots of Democrats for anxiety and depression, because of their obsession with this election and their fears that Obama will lose.”

Like Florida Democrats, who will never be dissuaded that the 2000 race was not stolen from them, their counterparts in Ohio still believe, without compelling evidence, that John Kerry was robbed of the presidency in 2004 because of Republican dirty tricks on voting day here. If the Democratic nominee had won 60,000 more votes in the Buckeye State four years ago he would be in the White House today.

Alec Clairmont, 23, described himself as extremely nervous, and was muttering darkly about a documentary he had seen the night before alleging that “people can programme voting machines so that they can send votes to the other side”. He added: “The polls look good, but I don’t know what will happen on election day.”

...Mr Obama and his aides are taking a somewhat less holistic approach in these last hours. They realise that the road to the White House runs through Ohio and its 20 electoral college votes, and have put in place an 11th-hour get-out-the-vote operation that is brutal in its scale and intensity.