Matt Malone, S.J.

The students hanging from the trees the adulating crowds the campaigner rsquo s hoarse voice calling for ldquo a movement for change rdquo mdash it all made President Obama rsquo s appearance last night at Ohio State look something like October 2008 For a moment the lsquo enthusiasm gap rsqu

You will recall that presidential candidate Barack Obama once in famously said ldquo Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not rdquo The response was predictable liberals were furious conservatives were nauseous a

Few people are as courageous as a politician who is out of a job and a long way from the next one When relieved of the demands of governing with all its attending compromises and necessary half-measures politicians find the pluck to simply speak their minds Take Ed Miliband for example Mr Mil

As Big Ben strikes 4 00 a m we are getting a clearer picture of the electoral reality We know that in all likelihood there will be a hung Parliament a kind of political stalemate in which no one party has a majority in the House of Commons We know that the Conservatives will have the most seats

It is approaching 3 00 a m here in London and in the words of Ed Miliband Britain s secretary of state for energy the people have spoken but we don t quite know what they ve said The Conservative Party had 116 seats on its so-called lsquo hit list rsquo the seats they thought they had a ch

Results continue to come in but they are uneven Earlier actual results indicated that the Conservatives were heading for an overall majority Yet the Tories are having trouble in the southwest of England wresting seats form the Liberal Democrats The Tory advance may have been checked in the south

More results coming in now The final outcome is far from certain though the swing toward the Conservatives appears to be stronger then the exit poll suggested This means that a hung Parliament might be avoided Meanwhile the high turnout has caught election officials off guard People have been

The second and third results have arrived They are also wins for Labour but there has been a sizable lsquo swing rsquo in the vote to the Conservatives lsquo Swing rsquo is the measure of the percentage change of vote from one election to another The swing in these first results is about 8

The first real results are in No surprise The Labour candidate in the Sunderland solidly Labour constituency has prevailed The real news is that the percentage change in the share of the vote for the major parties indicates that at least so far the exit poll is correct Now what will happen