You can’t watch politics alone. It’s a participatory sport, and opinions are what count. So as the polls begin to close and the 2008 Presidential race draws to a climactic end, we’ll be watching CNN for the pundits and Twitter for the peanut gallery. This two-screen approach has added lively annotation to speeches and debates thus far, especially when “Joe the Plumber” made its debut. Years ago, you would have been on the phone with a friend watching together, today, you can mock along with millions.
To track what everyone on Twitter is saying about the all things election, check out the Twitter Vote Report at Plodt.com. The new voting charts they created track wait times at the national, state and city levels — all in real time — show the locations with the longest wait times, and display all the other issues people are reporting. TheUptake.org was also encouraging livestreaming of polling places, as we reported in Friday’s news. There’s now also an Android app released for reporting into TwitterVoteReport that is one of the top rated right now.
So where are people waiting? Well, we’re glad we’re not in Kansas City, MO where people waited for 135 minutes. Here is a look at the entire country at press time.
How to read this map:
- Quality of experience:
No rating given
Bad (0-30%)
Medium (31-70%)
Good (71-100%)
- Wait time:
- 0-15 mins
- 16-60 mins
- 61+ mins
Tomorrow, they will be posting the last Political Anxiety chart, which “shot upward today in a final surge of collective worry.” Let’s hope that chart shoots down, and the Dow shoots up…
