Before going any further, review the Zogby exit polls, which gave Kerry a win, with at least 311 electoral votes.

And yet in state after state, the early numbers are coming in much more Republican.  Much more.  Despite record new voter registrations, young voters, and overall turnout, all of which favor Democrats.

In my limited understanding, it's not that unusual for early returns to lean to the right, since small, rural precincts are much easier to tabulate than large urban ones.  And absentee votes, which were unusually large and likely left-leaning, have yet to be added.  Still.  Something doesn't add up.

Given how well the GOP has learned to spin the media, and given how many states have mostly GOP state officials... is it possible that some officials are slowing the release of data from Democratic precincts, which would create a false impression of a sweeping GOP victory for the media, thus enabling later shouts of "fraud" from the right when the votes are all finally tallied?

Just asking.  There must be something I'm missing.  I don't know how else to explain this.