John Kerry won the exit polls while losing the vote. It can happen.  Confusion, poor analysis, and massive doses of wishful thinking transformed this fact into the entertaining delusion that George W. Bush had stolen the 2004 election, a delusion that is still quite popular in leftish circles.

We might just see a far more virulent version emerge tomorrow. You see, in a number of states, there have been lots of early voters.  More than two-thirds of the electorate has already voted in Nevada, over half in Florida, and about a third in Ohio. Those early votes appear to have gone to Obama, and by a lot (60%-36% among  Ohio early voters, 56%-42% among early voters in Florida).  In fact, it appears that early voters have gone _disproportionately_ for Obama – more than the voters as a whole. I would chalk this up to the enthusiasm gap – but it has an interesting consequence.   McCain is likely to win a normal exit poll of Tuesday voters in a number of early-voting states that he has no chance of carrying.  Those same polls show McCain winning 54% of votes cast tomorrow in Florida and 51% of votes cast tomorrow in Ohio.  But if those polls are accurate, he still loses those states because of already-cast ballots.

It seems to me that if any single network releases those exit polls without simultaneously explaining the impact of early voting – and maybe even if they _do_  explain it – a lot of rubes are going to come away with the inexpungible impression that they wuz robbed. Explanations would involve arithmetic, so there’s really no hope.