What time will Obama be elected?

Do you hate staying up late on election night to see if your guy won? Well, it looks like you may not have to this year. Barack Obama or John McCain needs to have 270 electoral votes to be considered the winner and next president of the United States. It looks like Senator Obama will reach that total somewhere between 9 and 11 pm EDT.

I compared the official times the polls close in each of the 50 states (and DC) with the number of electoral votes each state has, and plotted them on a timeline, based on which candidate is projected to win. I did this with two scenarios, for simplicity: one in which Senator McCain wins all of the "swing" states, and one in which Senator Obama wins the "swing" states.

Senator Obama won both scenarios. The swing states voting in McCain's favor will simply delay his victory by 2 hours. So, if you are an early riser, but want to confirm who won, set your alarm for 11pm. It should be all over by then.

McCain w/ Swing	Obama No Swing	Time (EDT)	Obama w/ Swing	McCain No Swing
55	3	7:00p	14	44
60	23	7:30p	34	49
104	150	8:00p	172	82
125	150	8:30p	187	88
195	236	9:00p	273	158
208	243	10:00p	290	161
215	320	11:00p	370	165
218	320	1:00a	370	168

This timeline is based on the projected electoral college votes predicted by fivethirtyeight.com. "Swing" states are those that are listed as less than 75% for either candidate in the left sidebar.

I will update this table if polls show either candidate pulling ahead in any of the swing states, or the margin narrowing in any of the "lock" states.