Due to a relapse in the flu./sinus infection (or stubborn lingering, as the case may be) I slept in this morning and am only now getting to the post-election info. I have sampled a few minutes of coverage on Fox News, CNN and the initial report at the top of MTP (which was waiting for me on TiVo).

The contrast between the Fox coverage and the NBC report from Brian Williams was remarkably stark. The Fox coverage was extremely upbeat/optimistic and the NBC coverage dour. For example: Fox had Reuters numbers of high turnout, while Brian Williams repeatedly pointed out that it was impossible to know hard numbers at this point.

I would split the difference: we aren’t going to know especially good numbers for over a week, but we can tell a) if the insurgency was effective in stopping the election (it appears that they were quite anemic overall) and b) what the general turnout was (was it good, bad, etc.—it appears to have been pretty good). Neither of those factors require perfect numbers to assess.

Quite frankly, the Fox people looked perhaps too ready to celebrate, but the NBC folks were far too eager to underscore all the negative.

The little I saw on CNN seemed a bit more straight news—but I caught it mostly during commercials, so can’t provide a sufficient impression at this time.

Ok: time to surf the newspapers, cable sites and blogs to see what there is to know.

(Side note: John Kerry all hour on the day of the Iraqi elections? What’s up with that? I don’t want a rehash of the 2024 elections at the moment—there is breaking news to discuss. Odd choice).