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Video: Daniel Finkelstein on how the night proved the pollsters right

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Holding fire in Pennsylvania

Akron, Ohio to Lake Harmony, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia at one end, Pittsburgh at the other and Alabama in between, is how James Carville, Bill Clinton’s strategist, described Pennsylvania.

That was back in 1986. In 1992, Bill Clinton – aided by Carville – won Pennsylvania, and the state has voted Democrat in every presidential election since.

But suddenly in 2008, the Keystone State is central to the McCain campaign. Although hemmed in on virtually all sides by states trending blue, John McCain and Sarah Palin have returned to the state again and again in recent weeks.

With its 21 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is the only big battleground state that went for John Kerry in 2004. All the other battlezones – Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Missouri, Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada – were in the Bush column last time round.

Real Clear Politics puts Obama nine points ahead in Pennsylvania. But surely there has to be something – maybe private polling – that makes the GOP think it has a chance here. The McCain campaign outspent the Obama campaign here until the beginning of October. And the Obama campaign just started advertising in Arizona, for heaven’s sake.

Put your hands up for Detroit

Chicago, Illinois to Detroit, Michigan

Michigan provided the world with early signs of Sarah Palin’s “whack job” tendencies. Faced with slumping Michigan polls combined with the news that steadfast states like Virginia and North Carolina were swerving wildly off course, the McCain campaign decided to cut their losses at the beginning of October.

Democrat John Kerry won Michigan’s 17 electoral votes in 2004 and, even several weeks ago, the McCain campaign realised that hanging onto red states, rather than trying to turn around blue states, would be the key to this election.

(“Apart from Pennsylvania,” they thought. “If things really fall apart in New Mexico/Nevada/Colorado.” Then, “What? Really? Move, move, MOVE on Pennsylvania.”)

So the day before the vice-president debate, as America waited agog for the showdown between Palin and Joe Biden, the Republicans shut down operations in Michigan. News that the Republicans had disintegrated in a huge key battleground flickered across television screens for a few minutes – then disappeared.

Until Palin popped up. “I want to get back to Michigan, and I want to try,” she told Fox News. “Todd and I, we'd be happy to get to Michigan. We'd be so happy to speak to the people there in Michigan who are hurting.”

She’d fired off emails, she said, “Oh c’mon, do we have to?”

Folksy and resolute. 2012, we are go. Collapse in Michigan and possible friction in the campaign ricochet back up the news agenda.

My kind of town, Chicago is...

Terre Haute, Indiana to Chicago, Illinois

I love it when politicians have nothing else to lose. John McCain has nothing to lose in Chicago. So when he calls Barack Obama “a Chicago politician” everyone knows exactly what he means.

Now that she’s all classy and Cloud Gate-d, Chicago does not like being reminded of her somewhat unladylike past.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” she says primly. “How dare you?”

“What are you going to do about it?” says McCain.

“I’ll, I’ll... I’ll vote for Obama.”

“No, really? Chicago in ‘voting for Illinois Democrat’ shocker.”

“Bite me!” bawls Chicago, forgetting all about being ladylike. “Punk.”

You can only be rude about cities that are definitely never ever going to vote for you. One hundred miles north of Chicago, radio ads are running in Wisconsin, reminding residents that McCain once said that he “would hate to live in Milwaukee.”

“What?” squeals Wisconsin. “What exactly is wrong with Milwaukee?”

Indiana - part of a different battle?

St Louis, Missouri to Terre Haute, Indiana

George Bush won Indiana by 20 points in 2004. Indiana has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate precisely once since 1936. The Republicans thought those were the statistics that mattered.

Barack Obama made 47 visits to Indiana this year. John McCain made two. That may be the statistic that actually matters.

There are two arguments for states like Indiana. The first is that the Republicans have been caught on the hop. Their voter registration and their get-out-the-vote machinery stagnated. In Indiana, like in Virginia and North Carolina, the Grand Old Party was outspent and outmanoeuvred by Obama’s new fighting force.

Sarah Palin is now making emergency trips to Indiana, but it may be too little, too late. The local newspaper notes pertly that McCain has not visited since 1 July. Obama dashed through even as he was heading off to Hawaii to see his ill grandmother.

Almost missing key battleground Missouri

Mount Pleasant, Iowa to St Louis, Missouri

When I fished out the back of an envelope to plot this trip a few weeks ago, Missouri did not feature. I meant to head through Minnesota and carry on through Wisconsin, before popping down to Chicago.

But suddenly, Wisconsin stopped swinging. Wisconsin went from being a coy little flirt to a prim Democrat lady in the space of about two weeks.

Suddenly it was all about Missouri. Yeah, yeah, I thought. Missouri? Whatever. John Kerry got whipped there. Where is Missouri, anyway? But then a few days ago I looked at some polling and thought “Crikey, it really is all about Missouri.”

So I dug out the atlas and tracked down Missouri. There it was, right next to Arkansas and Oklahoma and those other states that you can – sometimes, maybe – forget actually exist. Until you have to drive across them. Then I made a right off the mind-numbing I-90 and headed down through Iowa.

Thrillingly, shortly after I crossed the stateline into Missouri, I came across some hills for the first time in about three states. See, I thought, record-breaking crowds of 100,000 can’t be wrong. Then I headed down the Great River Road, which winds lazily along the banks of the Mississippi. Driving south catapulted me back into autumn, after several days of freezing winter in Idaho and Wyoming.

All in all, Wisconsin falling off the swing state list has been rather wonderful. Although I am fairly sure John McCain doesn’t look out of the windows of the Straight Talk Express and think “Oh good, look at all our lovely retrenching in scenic Missouri.”

Minnesota reverts to type

Kadoka, South Dakota to Jackson, Minnesota

I’m not sure what Janet Porter – one of the leading lights of conservative talk radio – normally sounds like, but she was pretty frenzied today. She was imploring America to pray for guidance on how to vote in less than two weeks’ time. A slightly hysterical Porter didn’t seem to think the correct divine message had been getting through so far.

In Porter’s callers rang, hitting all the usual talking points – is Barack Obama a natural-born American? Has anyone seen his birth certificate? Was he secretly born in Kenya? Did you know Iranian leaders had backed Obama? Etc etc.

“I don’t know about the birth certificate/Kenya/Iran,” answered Porter, “But you wonder, don’t you? You just wonder. Ayres! Muslim! ACORN!”

I’m paraphrasing because I was driving down the crashingly dull I-90 as I listened to all this. I cheered myself up with the thought of locking Janet Porter and Janet Street-Porter in a room together and seeing which one emerged alive.

Eventually, after hundreds of miles of soggy grey fields under a soggy grey sky, I wound up in Minnesota.

Lies and more lies: the 10 dirtiest tricks in US electoral history

An already nasty race is getting even nastier with both parties trading allegations of voting irregularities and underhand tactics. Here, I take a look at the 10 dirtiest incidents in US electoral history - in no particular order.

Thomas Jefferson and James Callender

  The long and inglorious history of dirty tricks in US electoral politics stretches right back to 1800, in what was only the second contested presidential election. Vice-President Thomas Jefferson hired Scottish-born journalist and pamphleteer James Thomas Callender to slander his opponent, the incumbent president and formerly great friend, John Adams. In published writings, Callender accused Adams of being a “repulsive pedant” and “a hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman”. In return, Adams' camp called Vice President Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father." The attacks sunk ever lower with Adams being labelled a criminal and Jefferson an atheist, but Jefferson’s smears-by-proxy were ultimately more successful with Callender convincing most Americans that Adams was set on attacking France, clinching the election for him.

However the tactics later backfired as Callender, after serving jail time for the slander of Adams,  turned on Jefferson and began to train his attacks on him. Callender wrote in a series of articles that Jefferson had fathered children by his slave, Sally Hemings, and later, after that scandal ran its course, eventually blew over, exposed the President's attempt to seduce a married neighbor years earlier.

Just Green Grass in Red Wyoming

West Yellowstone, Montana to Jackson Hole, Wyoming

A journalist buddy of mine in Washington spent an evening looking after his sick toddler – and was thrilled to note that Barack Obama and Bob The Builder share the same slogan: “Yes We Can!”

The toddler can already say “John McCain”, is more or less there on “Sarah Palin”, but struggles on “Obama”. I suspect flash cards are being used.

I dread to think what happens when the offspring of White House correspondents start learning maths. It’s probably something like this.

Kansas + Nebraska + Vermont + Wyoming = Michigan

Utah × Indiana = California

Florida ÷ Colorado = Montana *

Keeping it in the family

Lovelock, Nevada to Jordan Valley, Oregon

Some people in Washington DC refuse to believe Boris Johnson actually exists. They suspect that London is playing some sort of international prank.

“"Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3,” they read.

“Impossible,” they squeal.

It’s not just Boris. There are loads of things in Britain that are hard to explain to Americans. Like the House of Lords.

“Really? People end up in your Senate just because their father was a Lord?”

But hereditary politics are live and well in America too. The Bushes and the Kennedys and the Clintons are obvious.