More early exit poll data with more good news for Barack Obama. One in ten voters said they were voting for the first time, and those new voters were mostly young and/or black - demographics that are good for the Democratic candidate.
Another encouraging sign for Obama is that a third of the voters said that the quality they were looking for in their candidate was the capacity to bring change – Obama's buzzword, although John McCain tried to take a bit of that territory too.
Just one-fifth said experience was the decisive element for them - McCain's whole rationale. A majority thought President Bush had done a very poor job, but almost everyone now thinks that so it doesn't say much.
One note of caution about the early exit polls. Back in 2004, the polling early in the day showed things going very well for John Kerry, triggering early celebrations, but a cool-headed Democrat I talked to that night said that they usually got a morning surge as women voted, and then the pendulum swung against them when their husbands came home from work. She turned out to be right on the night.
