In the Senate, the Democrats picked up five seats. But hey, guess what? Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman barely held on to his seat. With all the precincts reporting, Coleman's won by 571 votes. Which means recount time! Poor comedian Al Franken should've won this, but a third party candidate took more of his votes than Coleman's (instant runoff voting, anyone? please?), and also he didn't run a very good campaign, and also Minnesotans, like many Americans, are in love with the idea of a divided government as some sort of good thing, because we all remember how well that worked in 1994, when the government shut down, as a stunt. And hey, let's check in on Alaska, the retarded child state America forgot it adopted until this year, when it nearly crashed the democratic car into a tree. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who is a convicted felon, won his reelection campaign! Stevens, convicted just last week of seven counts of corruption, has a 4,000 vote lead over his opponent, some boring non-corrupt Democrat. There are still 50,0000 absentee ballots left to count, so you know, this could still go either way. But honestly, Stevens is probably a lock. Good work, Alaska.

We know it's too soon to bring you all down, because last night was indeed an inspiring and amazing night and John Lewis was so so so great to see and wow, it was just, man. But! Other things went down in the great nation of ours too! We began looking at the Ballot Initiative fights, last night. But then we got drunk and went to bed. So let's check in on how the gays are doing, this morning, in Barack Obama's hopeful New America. Out in California, Proposition 8, the ballot initiative to ban all the wonderful, tear-jerking gay marriages that ruined all the straight marriages out there, is narrowly ahead in the polls. With 95% of precincts reporting, the ban is holding up 52% to 48%. :( California's Proposition 5, the one that would mandate lax penalities for all non-violent drug-related crimes, lost 59.8% to 40.2%. The only good news out of California is that Prop 4, the abortion notification initiative, looks to be failing. Arizona's Proposition 102, the gay marriage amendment, passed handily. Fuck Arizona. Florida's terribly worded gay marriage ban passed too! With the necessary 60% and everything! This amendment also fucks over every non-married cohabitatng couple as well, and seems to even outlaw civil unions. Sorry, gays, no hospital visits for you! Similar great news for bigoted morons in Arkansas, where the measure forbidding gays and ummarried people from adopting or fostering children passed with flying colors. They did also vote to remove the outdated language in their constitution banning "idiots and insane persons" from voting, though they didn't replace it with language banning Arkansas from voting. (J/k, democracy's a wonderful thing, whatever.) Michigan legalized medical marijuana, Colorado and South Dakota's abortion bans failed, and Massachusetts' marijuana decriminalization passed.

In the first election of the 21st century decided by the end of Election Day, Democratic Senator Barack Obama was elected President, beating Republican Senator John McCain. Obama, 47, is the United States of America's first black president. Despite his race, despite his being a liberal Midwestern Senator running with an east coast Democratic Senator, despite running against an incredibly well-respected and admired Republican with great independent voter appeal (at least back in the day), Obama took it decisively. It was a good year for Democrats, what with the economy melting down and the last dying breaths of the miserable presidency of universally despised Republican president George W. Bush, but it did look, for minute, like it might be another close one. If, for example, Hillary Clinton had won the Democratic nomination, as it was predicted she would last year, we probably would've seen a repeat of the "50+1" strategy of fighting the election only in two or three "swing states" (Kerry states + Ohio = victory!), and probably another 49/48 popular vote split. But Obama fought in "red states" like Indiana and much of the mountainous southwest. The map expanded, and stupid Ohio and Florida were justifiably stripped of a great deal of their terrible importance. Obama finally won with more than 50 percent of the popular vote, the first time a Democrat managed that feat in a generation. Obama ended up a much stronger candidate than even his early partisans could've predicted, with a calm, intelligent, cool demeanor. That demeanor got him labeled a stuffy egghead early on, especially when contrasted with Hillary Clinton's newfound fiery populism, but in a time of great upheaval, "appearing presidential" suddenly looked good. And he looked presidential in three debates, while his opponent, John McCain, sputtered and shouted and, in Joe Biden's memorable words, "lurched" around the stage of the town hall. Thing got completely fucking crazy in the last days, as the Republican dead-enders began trying, surprisingly without efficacy, to appeal to the basest instincts of the electorate, painting Obama as a Marxist Socialist (and quietly encouraging people to think he was a DANGEROUS MUSLIM TERRORIST), but every time voters saw the candidate he looked like a rational, moderate, smart family guy. It was a half-hearted use of identity politics by a Republican who always hated the rabble of the Religious Right but it did intensify to uncomfortable levels in the end. The high point, weirdly, was a crazy young white woman in Pittsburgh filing a false complaint to the police claiming she was mugged and robbed by a huge black man who carved a B in her face. The self-inflicted B was, of course, carved backwards, and soon she was off for mental health treatment. It was a nice little microcosm of the state of the race nationally—the race-baiting didn't work! He inherits a nation utterly fucked to it's core by the venal incompetents of the Bush years, and lord knows it's idiotic to invest all your hopes in one guy egomaniacal enough to want to be president at all, but we have secret hopes in our tiny heart that he'll be a decent success. And, of course, we all get fucking unicorns. Seriously. Check your mail next January. Unicorns and cocaine for all! Image: (c) Jana Kohl and Robert Sebree, www.ararebreedoflove.com, used with permission from (c) holder.

Will the Democrats get 60 seats in the Senate? Will Obama win in a landslide and have a MANDATE? Ugh. No, and yes, respectively. Dems are looking good in the Senate but not 60 seats good. Obama will get over 50% of the popular vote, the first time any Democrat's managed that in a generation. That sounds like enough of a mandate to us. What else? Coleman/Franken The Minnesota Senate race will be down to the wire. Franken is ahead at the moment but it's close. Exit polls look decent for him, but that third-party guy might hurt him. Michelle Bachmann The insane Minnesota congresswoman might pull this off—she's ahead at the moment but the write-in Repub challenger might kill her hopes. Ted Stevens The Alaska Senator and convicted felon faces a tough fight but, you know, Alaska loves that corrupt asshole. Alaska polls close late. Proposition 8 Lord knows what's going on with California's gay marriage initiative. Whites want the gay marriage, blacks and latinos are divided. Cautious optimism?

The saddest thing about the scene at John McCain's headquarters "party" in Columbus has to be the "Victory in Ohio" sign, captured in an near-poetic camera pan at the end of this video. The klieg lights probably aren't helping the McCain crew with its depression. Might we suggest bourbon?

Sorry, Dianne Feinstein! Exit polls are useless and wrong (actually they're not entirely wrong and useless except that no one knows how to read them, except Marc Ambinder). But they're out, now, and soon they'll be everywhere. Let's get to it: "Senate sources" say the Dems will be stuck at 58 seats. Sad! After the jump, the numbers that people like Drudge have. There are no surprises but the slight Obama leads in MO and IN are probably LIES. (Or, uh, misleading.) GA 47-51 FL 52-49 IA 58-42 IN 52-48 MI 60-39 MN 56-39 MO52-48 NC 52-48 NH 57-43 NM 56-43 NV 55-45 OH 54-45 PA 57-42 VA 55-45 WV 45-55 WI 58-42 National 54-44 Senate numbers we don't believe at all (because the Coleman number is absurd): Sununu down 18 Coleman down 12 McConnell up 2 Chambliss up 3 Dole down 52-43 AND:

In the future the history books will say this election was fought across blog posts and in the comment trenches, via video links and perpetual forwards. History books will be full of shit, obv, because 99% of the internet noise about the election was barely readable garbage and nonsense. Our resident expert in garbage and nonense, is, of course, Comments Czar Kaila, who decides which of you get to live to comment another day. So below, for your Election Day, Kaila shares some of the very best of the best of insane rejected comments. "Fuck you you fucking liberal elitist fucks," after the jump! Leave 'em hanging: Palin Emails Real

The Times wants to know how you're feeling, today. Are you hopeful? Or scared? Type a word, and say who you support in the election, and the word will fly by on the screen, magically. What we learned: McCain supporters are scared, patriotic, worried, determined, tired, depressed, upset, anxious, terrified, and, yes, hopeful. Obama supporters, in calm, soothing blue, are hopeful, happy, ready, tired, relieved, and, of course, nervous and anxious. Everyone in America needs a damn nap. [NYT]

It's over! It's all over! Tomorrow the campaign will be done! No more caring about what crazy things John McCain and his bitchy friend said on the news, no more feeling bad for him despite yourself, no more checking 538 (sorry Nate Silver, you're obsolete now!), no more forwarded YouTube clips from your mom, or your coworker, or some lunatic internet person. Boy, if we were assholes, we'd write something about how this was "the YouTube election." But instead we will just post the YouTubes themselves, from 2004 through the never-ending primaries, through the finally ending general election. All your favorites are here! Come pal around with crying Hillary the Senator, stare deep into Mike Gravel's eyes, and don't look your opponent in the eyes, after the jump. Back in 2004, this guy named Barack Obama gave a really really good speech at the Democratic National Convention. Watch it again, if you haven't lately, because it's really good. Can you believe we're gonna elect this guy?

So this dumb conservative PAC finally, finally made the ad about Barack Obama's controversial preacher Jeremiah Wright that the McCain campaign didn't want to touch. Its very existence garnered plenty of media attention&dmash;and, of course, free airtime for the ad—but then the PAC had to actually put it on television. Instead of a targeted ad-buy in white swing areas, they just went national, sticking it on Sunday Night Football, last night's Saturday Night Live election special, and, uh, on the Rachel Maddow show? Clearly they didnt want to "influence the election" or anything with their little ad, they just wanted to annoy the hell out of Democrats while they're trying to watch their liberal shows.

Sarah Palin voted in Wasilla, Alaska. She took questions from the press, with her husband Todd. The press asked who she voted for, and she said, "I am also exercising my right to privacy and I don't have to tell anyone who I voted for, nobody does, and that's really cool about America, also." She wrote in "Sarah Palin 2012," obviously. Here's the clip! Watch it now! Ha, of course, upon re-watching, the question is about whether she voted for convicted felon Senator Ted Stevens, from Alaska. She won't say, of course, because she still has to go back to Alaska when she's done with this little vacation, and "Uncle Ted" is still a powerful figure, and she "stood up to corrupt old boy politics" by not even admitting that she probably still voted for him.

There's a limited number of ways you can make "election day" a front page, above the fold headline. Because, you know, nothing will be "news" until tomorrow. So you can "report," as many papers do, that people will choose someone (YOU DECIDE, YOU CHOOSE, IT'S UP TO YOU), today, with a big splash featuring both candidates' headshots. You can try to make some actual "news," as the Times and the Wall Street Journal do with stories on how historic everything is and what the winner will inherit. You can report on all the boring campaigning of yesterday, or predict electoral chaos, or, as the New York Post admirably did, just pretend there isn't even an old white Republican in this race. The papers in the attached image chose almost exactly as you might predict. A couple papers across the world went a different direction.

According to Drudge, Barack Obama and his wife Michelle have taken "more than 15 minutes to vote." Maybe they're undecided? His link goes nowhere. Ben Smith doesn't report anything about how long it took Barack Obama to vote. Meanwhile: "HILLARY POLITICKING INSIDE NY POLLING AREA, ADVOCATES FOR OBAMA, 5 FEET FROM BOOTHS... DEVELOPING..." Once again, no link! But this is really a "fuck you, too late to not vote for me" move by the Obamas. Look who else voted at their polling place:

Oh, hey, what do you know: Sarah Palin has suddenly been cleared of the two biggest blots on her record, and just in time for the election! What amazing timing. First, the Alaska Personnel Board and its independent counsel decided the Republican vice-presidential nominee didn't abuse her power as Alaska governor to have her former brother-in-law fired as state public safety commissioner. Also, Palin released her medical history just as she promised the entire country she would on television, to disprove all those crazy theories about how Trig Palin isn't really her baby. Have you spotted the terrible distortion in all this yet, traumatized 2008 campaign veteran?

Tomorrow, America Votes. Most people are fixated on "who will be the next President" and "how many Senate seats will Democrats pick up" but you know what? Real Democracy happens in the insane initiatives that clog local ballots every year. But many of these initiatives are about "taxes" and "redistricting" and other boring things like that. So we've put together a voters guide highlighting only ballot initiatives of interest to drinking, drugging, and whoring Gawker readers. We'll focus on statewide ballot initiatives, which sadly leaves out awesome things like San Francisco's prostitution-legalizing Proposition K but honestly we didn't have time to comb through every damn city in the country's crazy notions. Click through and learn how to vote, oh citizens of this grand experiment! Lady Issues

Do you feel that, liberals? If it's the first Monday of November, it must be nameless paranoid dread time! Maybe Joe the Plumber actually speaks to the secret fears of bitter Ohioans! Maybe Obama's bird-flipping scandal will turn off soccer moms! Maybe the polls are wrong, or tightening! Maybe the voting machines will be broken! Basically today all anyone can think about is how will we fuck this up? See, because all liberals have managed to do for thirty years is fuck everything up. So now they panic. Some have had scary dreams! A reader writes:

Matt Drudge has lost it. Utterly, totally lost it. This is his headline, right now, the day before the elections. It links to a YouTube clip of Barack Obama scratching his face with his index and, yes, middle fingers. Just like he did to Hillary Clinton, once! Don't you remember? Now we know who the real Barack Obama is: he is a secret asshole. This is really the best anyone can do, because it turns out all those other secret things he is aren't true. Like, for example, Bill Ayers, radical domestic terrorist and respected professor, did not write Barack Obama's book. This was revealed when California businessman Robert Fox and his Republican Congressman brother-in-law paid an Oxford don to investigate similarities between Dreams From My Father and Ayers' Fugitive Days. The charges were "laughably unsubstantiated." But of course Obama is still a secret Muslim foreigner, right? He was totally born in Indonesia, right? Ha, the Director of Hawaii's Department of Health has actually bothered to respond to the lunatics. You may be shocked to learn that Barack Obama's birth certificate is real. So really all that's left is to basically accuse Obama of everything in the world, all at once, like in this 100% real robocall now being made in Pennsylvania.

Let's check in with famous and successful media critic Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post. What is Mr. Kurtz writing about today? The Monday after John McCain's much-discussed appearance on Saturday Night Live, his second of the general election campaign and coming just weeks after his running mate Sarah Palin's well-publicized cameo, Kurtz's column is, of course, about how Obama is on TV all the time, and all the television talk shows are In The Tank for Barack Obama.

Did you watch Saturday Night Live? Ben Affleck was lame. John McCain was funny. Cindy McCain was the funniest(!). The ending was strangely awkward. But you know what wasn't as funny as it should've been? The Keith Olbermann sketch. Ben Affleck's "Keith Olbermann" impression was basically his "Alec Baldwin" except louder. The sketch lasted forever and wasn't funny until the "special comment" at the end, which should've been the sum total of the bit (watch the whole thing after the jump, kids!). But apparently John McCain thought it was the best! The McCain campaign was delighted with the absurd bit, and said it was "about time" that SNL mocked MSNBC's most indignant anchoir. So of course Ana Marie Cox emailed Olbermann himself for his response to the McCain camp's response to his getting made fun of on a tee-vee show. He responded faux-good-naturedly and also had some secret sexy news about Sarah Palin going rogue!

Tomorrow is Election Day, the famous American Holiday in which people are not given a day off of work but are still expected to wait in lengthy lines outside elementary schools during business hours in order to have their provisional ballots thrown away or watch their electronic voting machines helpfully select the Constitution Party candidate. Yes, voting is hard, and seldom worth it. Which is why civic-minded companies are giving people prizes for voting! A voter an receive a free cup of coffee from Starbucks, a free donut from Krispy Kreme, and free ice cream from Ben & Jerry's if they show up and tell them they voted. It's a great, fun way to boost turnout, and it's probably totally illegal! The laws do vary from state to state, but for elections to federal office, our Congress is clear: