I was happy to reconcile myself to black one as the world's most powerful man. But a Jew one as his chief of staff? What is next? A gay one as Secretary of State? A Chinese one as national security advisor? A woman?

Oh My God its here its here its finally here.

Please, join me tonight from 11.30pm on this blog, for the Election That Changed The World. I sound snide, but I could not be more excited.

Do: leave comments. Do: send texts.

Plans for tomorrow: get new obsession.

Some time passes.

Election log starts here:

11.45pm - BBC is on. It is on. All this talk is tedious. Gimme some results.

11.53pm - The first interesting states are Indiana, Virginia and Georgia. They aren't mentioning Georgia much, because pollsters have McCain winning. But I think pollsters may have dramatically underestimated black vote - in early voting they represent 35% (relative to 25% assumption in most polls). Black vote is about 95% Obama. I've seen the maths on 411, and I believe it.

12.01am - Vermont to Obama, Kentucky to McCain. Dog bites man.

12.09am - Me, I would have expected South Carolina to be called for McCain already.

12.31am - Polls close in Ohio, West Virginia and North Carolina. And...no things. Even in West Virginia? Oh, no, wait. Fox has called it. Does that count? I love these election shows. Dimbleby is all: "you, person, break down this situation/non-situation for me".

12.40am - Tom tells me that South Carolina won't be close (and he's worked on actual races there). I agree, but am also filled with irrational exuberance.

12.42am - I don't think Christopher Hitchens likes Palin. He raises a good point though - what would have happened with a McCain/Lieberman ticket?

12.56am - South Carolina is called for McCain. Irrational exuberance is quashed. 16-3. It's a landslide.

1.00am - Pennsylvania goes to Obama the second the polls close. And New Hampshire. Those were two that McCain had hoped to win. This could be over quite quickly.

1.05am - There's loads more as well in New England, Maine, Delaware, and DC. Also projected to take Mexico. McCain takes Oklahoma and Tennessee. Also projected to take something for the pain. 103-34. It's a landslide.

1.44am - Georgia seems to be going to McCain. Damn you, overly complicated mathematical predictions. DAMN YOU.

2.00am - More polls close. New Mexico and Colorado are the key ones here. It's about time Obama turns one of the Bush states.

2.07am - David Dimbleby agrees with me.

2.10am - Arizona is too close to call. That has to hurt.

2.23am - John Boulton and Kate the Reporter go at it! I'm with her - polling seems to suggest that she has energised Democrats more than Republicans, and has certainly turned off the independents McCain needed to win this year.

2.25am - Ohio called for Obama. Election called for Obama. Andy texts to say "Oh! Hi! O! Ohiobama!". We pause to discuss Hillary Clinton looking as "sick as a dog" at her polling station. I suggest she voted for Hillary Clinton. Andy says she scrawled it on the screen with a stanley knife. I suggest she uses the blood of a passing orphan. Andy speculates she robs the men of America of their erections on the way out. Hillary 2012.

2.37am - New Mexico looks like it's going for Obama. It's a landslide.

2.38am - Technical definition of a landslide - over 55% of the vote. It's a landslide in Maine.

2.51am - COME ON. No sleep until 270.

3.02am - Iowa flips for Obama. He'll be president by 4am.

3.08am - Apparently, a couple of extreme pro-life propositions are defeated in South Dakota and Colorado. Abortion wins.

3.15am - I'm watching John Boulton get offended that a British journalist dare ask probing question to a the Colorado Republican chair, and I hoping that someone projects that Obama takes John Boulton.

3.33am - Marijuana decriminalised in Massachusetts, and approved for medical purposes in Michigan. Anarchy wins.

3.43am - Dimbleby makes a mistake that I also made this week - he says California has always gone Democrat. I think I'm right in saying that's only been true since 1992. Corrections welcome.

3.59am - Here we go...

4.01am - ...oh, I missed it.

4.03am - I'm done. Quick poll of people that enjoyed watching the election coverage in this room: 1-0. It's a landslide.

The McCain campaign has completely fallen apart at this stage, with in-fighting rife, and journalists writing pieces about the disaster of poor strategy and bad organisation that it has been. This article is really excellent, and is must-read (if a nerd, like me).

And today's Holy-Christ moment is this: according to two recent polls, Arizona is possibly competitive, with McCain having only a 3-4% lead in his home state. I'm going to have a good time next Tuesday.

To finish, here's my favourite election story right now. A canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. She knocks, and a woman answers. The canvasser asks the woman who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, so she yells to her husband, "Honey, who are we voting for?". The husband yells back, "We're votin' for the nigger!" The woman then turns back to canvasser, and says, "We're voting for the nigger."

Thank you, Colin Powell, for making a point not articulated enough - that Barack Obama is not a Muslim, but even if he is, why should anyone care? Possibly Democrats think they can't afford, at this time, to say this too much. That would be sad, if it were true.

This is a really nice bit of satire, in response to some of the people who've been speaking out at McCain rallies. I love you, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Here's an admission that will surprise hardly anyone who knows me (and complete stranger that are just good at this game): I'm quite a nerd. For things that I'm interested in or that catch my attention, I love getting details, reading opinions, and storing up knowledge so that one day I could explain to someone else a chronology of events (score) or maybe even compile a list (double score).

So, I hear a new band, and I want to know all their albums, which ones are seminal, how their sound evolved and how they fit into a particular scene or genre. Sometimes I'll do all this without listening to much of their actual music. It's the same for wrestling and for comedy, and for the last 10 months, it has been the US presidential elections.

I get a lot of information from this site, run by Ashish, which aside from covering a wide range of issues and opinions, has been excellent at summarising and collating polling data, and explaining what matters. The way they have fluctuated has been one of the most interesting parts of this process. And the way polls look now, it is going to be a whitewash on election day.

I also stayed up last night to watch the VP debate. I thought Joe Biden was statesman-like, which is probably a codeword for dull. Which is fine - its hard to criticise someone for being competent and knowledgeable. I thought he pulled punches, as was predicted - given expectations, he would have appeared bullying and arrogant if he'd gone on the attack at her. Instead, he established Obama's positions and pushed the line about McCain being the next Bush. He also managed to (finally) cast doubt of McCain's supposed maverick credentials, and their increasingly noticeable absence in this campain

Palin grated on me throughout, not just her voice, but also the way she treated the whole thing as an opportunity to pivot to any topic she has pre-prepared lines about. Maybe her folksy manner is appealing to some voters, but she appeared out of her depth.

And I'll tell you what else. She's lining for a run at the nomination in 2012. So much of what she said last night was about her and her record, not that of her principal. Plus, the way she, this morning, openly contested the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan - it's like she knows this race is lost, so its time to push herself forward.

(By the way, I've always thought I too have a folksy charm: the way you can tell is that I have the word "folksy" in my vocabulary, and use it to describe elements of my personaility. And it isn't just my charm that is folksy. I also have a folksy shouting at the elderly for getting in my way, and a folksy addiction to petrol fumes.)

Anyway, I'm going to miss all this come November.

With all the excitement of the US presidential race over the past 10 days, I'd like to add this. Joe Biden's son is called Beau. Beau Biden. I'd like to suggest that the senior senator from Delaware may not be what you would call an "ideas man".

That said I'm copyrighting Hraig Holmes. No-one else can now use that for their son. I'm looking at you, Craig Crolmes.

The Obama cartoon on the front of this week's edition of the New Yorker appears to have got a number of people angry, though in all fairness, this anger has mainly been restricted so far to just the left and the right. That leaves, well, the staff of the New Yorker in the Not Angry column.

Which is silly really, because the people that should be angry are the staff of the New Yorker, for having everyone distort a perfectly good piece of political satire into a bit of propaganda that either a.) plays on peoples fears that Obama is a Secret Muslim, or, b.) plays on peoples fears that all Republicans are Secret Racists.

This is unlikely to escalate, thankfully, like the reaction to the Muhammed cartoon a couple of years ago. There, Muslims took to the streets to burn Danish flags. Democrats on the streets burning American flags may not quite send the right message.

What's most frustrating about this is that it is exactly the sort of non-news distraction that Obama has been railing against for months. Steven Colbert has been calling Obama a Secret Muslim for months, and no-one complains. Why does everyone get that joke, but not this one? Maybe the New Yorker is an easy target. The guys at the Daily Show and the Colbert Report would have a field day if they were attacked for a joke.

By the way, I am glad Colbert and Stewart are back.

I don't know if Barack Obama will be doing any public events while he stops in Britain later this month, but if he were to do so, I would be keen to go along. It would be mighty. Plus, it's completely unfair that he never has any campaign stops in the UK just because its a safe win for him here, what with McCain not planning to compete in any of the "abroad" states. Sure, we have few, if any, electoral college votes, but would it kill him to pop by more often to thank us for our largely imaginary votes?

The race has quietened down a little in the last couple of months, and while the realities of presidential politics have pushed him into some disappointing stances - his vote for the surveillance bill and his opting out of public financing to mention two - he still has the ability to remind me why I'm prObama.

This, and then me. I am 13 days cleverer than the Guardian.

If you like McCain rather than Obama, you're stupid. If you like Clinton over Obama, you're really stupid. Look, see.

I have faith, however, that Obama will soon make in-roads into the core really stupid vote that so far has been going against him. Then, a Clinton staff-member will get fired for implying that Obama has only got as far as he has because he's a smart, she herself will go on the record to say that despite his background, he's not a genius, "as far as she is aware", before finally some footage will appear on YouTube of Obama's former primary school teacher giving lessons in Latin. Thankfully, the young Barack wasn't in the room at the time when this Latin was spoken.

It's a parody, you see.

While I'm waiting, I skimmed through this week's Economist. There's a story about the aftermath of the Jeremiah Wright issue and Clinton's Bosnia lie - the former has had no long term damage, while the latter really has (Yesterday's Gallup national tracking poll had Obama up 52-42, having been level just over a week ago).

One part of the story was funny enough to warrant repeating here:

"Meanwhile, her campaign rolled up its sleeves and circulated an email revealing that Mr Obama also tells fibs. Leading the list was that he often referred to himself as a former law professor at the University of Chicago, when in fact he was only a senior lecturer. So far, the Obamaphile media has cravenly neglected to give this the space it clearly deserves."

I've been saying this all day, and I know I should try and be above this, but whenever I see Hillary Clinton on TV, talking with words, I have an overwhelming urge to kick her in the face.

I would also like to point out the following.

We have an old Senator from a border state as Republican nominee well ahead in the conference season. He espouses some traditional conservative views, but is disliked by the religious right. He has a lot of appeal across the political spectrum.

We have a close two horse race for the Democratic nomination that is likely to go to the conference. One is a charismatic and youthful politician, from a non-white Caucasian ethnic background. The other is more of an establishment figure who has had first hand experience working in the White House. The presumptive nominee for a long time, there are many within the party would have been happy to see the nomination go to anyone else.

I can't help feeling I've seen this before. Is there any chance McCain helped a nuclear powerstation when he was younger?

I am the most correct person in the world.

I am also slightly baffled as to what would happen if one person wanted a case tried under UK law, and another wanted it tried under Sharia law.

In a debate yesterday in Florida, Mitt Romney accused John McCain of thoroughly deplorable views such a reducing the extent to which rich people get to use microphones more often, reducing the extent to which poor but hard-working foreigners are kicked in the face, and reducing the extent to which people who burn stuff now are allowed to pay only a fraction of its cost.

Tomorrow, Romney will accuse McCain of being nice to small children, having good manners and knowing how to make a truly exceptional meringue.

Conservatives hate meringue. No-one works hard for it, sounds French, and causes homosexuality.

I was motivated by Tom, today, to make this completely outlandish prediction: John McCain will win the Republican nomination next year. I actually think this.