Nate Silver just tweeted: “FWIW, there’s about a 4 pt difference between generic ballot polls that included cellphones and those which didn’t.”

That’s a huge spread by methodology, though conceivably Rasmussen’s ‘house effect’ may be skewing the difference we can attribute to methodology. Regardless, it’s looking more and more like 2010 may be the last year when pollsters were able to write off the cell phone issue.

We’ve been telling you how ‘True the Vote’ has been sending poll watchers for weeks to harass (primarily minority) voters for weeks down in Harris County, Texas. Now the fringe group ‘New Black Panther Party’, the folks who’ve become the bete noir of Tea Partiers and ‘vote fraud’ bamboozlers have announced they’re going to show up at the polls in Harris County too.

We’re putting together a package of the most memorable/iconic moments of this campaign season. What stands out for you? Which episodes will define this election in your mind for years to come? Chickens for checkups? “I am not a witch”? You get the idea. There’s a lot to choose from and we’re probably forgetting some of the best ones. So help us out.

Annals of shattered dreams: Fox & Friends offended that people think Stewart & Colbert are real “newspeople”.

Less than 12 hours before Election Day. We’ve got all the new polls crammed into the TPM PollTracker machine. It’s spit out new graphs in all the key races. This is your last best read on what tomorrow will look like. Take a look.

TPM Reader GM checks in from way, way up North …

Your note on the Joe Miller campaign’s bizarre “self-immolation = victory” narrative caught my attention.

I’ve been watching the scene up here for a while. Politically and culturally speaking, Alaska is really North Oklahoma. Nation-wide, there is a 15-20% part of the population that is hard-core right wing conservative (e.g. the ones who still gave Dick Cheney a thumbs up at the end of the Bush years). Up here, that number is 30-35%. These are your hard-core Miller supporters, and there is almost literally nothing he can do to alienate them so long as he toes their ideological line. That is the vote he will likely get, and it is not surprising that the PPP poll supports that.

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The reason Christine O’Donnell’s 30-minute TV ad aimed at sealing the deal with voters didn’t air last night, as she had announced, was because her campaign dropped the ball, Delaware TV stations tell TPM.

Not only that but O’Donnell accused the stations of bias when the ad didn’t run. One of those stations was the local Fox affiliate, which tells us the campaign never purchased air time from them for the ad.

There’s a proposition on the ballot this year to change the name of Rhode Island from “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” to simply “Rhode Island.” The idea is that the appendage “Providence Plantations” is redolent of slavery and should go. I can’t get too crazy up in arms about it. But it’ll be an unfortunate change and I’ll be sorry to see it go. And in this case, I actually have a decent amount of formal expertise on this topic.

As some of you know, before I got into this line of work I was studying to be a professional historian. I got my History PhD from Brown University, which is located in Providence, Rhode Island. More to the point, my PhD dissertation was on Southern New England in the 17th century and the mix of economic interactions and violent conflict between the region’s English settler and Indian populations. So without putting too fine a point on it, on the issue of labor practices, slavery and early Rhode Island I’m actually a bona fide expert. And since this is probably one of the few questions on which I get to write on which I have any formal expertise … what the hell, here’s my take. Read More

Here’s one last look at the trends and final averages of all the top races. Take a look at our snapshot of where the key races stand with a day to go. We’ve put together a slide show of the trend graphs, as of today, of all the key races. Take a look.

If you want to dig into the numbers yourself rather than take the guided tour, use the interactive map at TPMPolltracker to find any race in the country you want.

Everyone knows Democrats are going to take a beating tomorrow. Estimates vary on how bad a beating — and, hey, you never know, there could be some surprises. But I do know this: Democrats and their supporters are going to be blown away by the narratives that are seeded on election night and emerge in full bloom by Wednesday morning.

Some you’re ready for: The election proves that America is a center-right country. Voters have ratified the Republican agenda. Democrats took a bad economy and made it worse. Read More