Need a quick summary of yesterday's national and state Election Day results? You've come to the right place.

CNN, AP, and all the major networks have called it: Illinois Senator Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States.

We're keeping tabs on the hottest races in Texas right here at the Blue.

Over 42% of registered Texans voted early. This means two things: The election is nearly guaranteed to shatter all previous turnout records, and lines in many places may be shorter than you think. Never a better time to vote on Election Day!

Some Harris County voting locations are observing that as many as two of every three voters are in the wrong voting location. So look up your voting location before heading out to vote. You can often find out your voting location at your county's elections website, or you can try one of the links in our handy-dandy "Where Do I Vote?" section.

Dallas trial lawyer and Democratic luminary Fred Baron passed away today of complications from bone marrow cancer. Baron was 61.

Harris County saw nearly 40,000 registered voters vote on the first day of early voting — and then saw that number go up for both Tuesday and Wednesday. Dallas County saw the early voting numbers hit 10% of all registered voters by the end of Wednesday. Which is apparently typical — the Secretary of State reports that over 10% of registered voters in the state of Texas had voted in person or by mail by Wednesday evening. At this rate, we'll have hit 40% turnout by the time early voting ends.

I know, I know, that's not particularly likely — but wouldn't it be nice?

In a blow to McCain's attempts to capture the moderate center — attempts which were made largely futile by the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate — General Colin Powell announced that he would be endorsing Senator Barack Obama this morning on Meet The Press.

Senator McCain spent a lot of time in yesterday's debate talking about Joe the Plumber when it came to his economic plan. It took the online community less than a day to figure out the Joe the Plumber's not a plumber — among many other things.

In yesterday's presidential debate, McCain expressed offense at statements by Congressman John Lewis, who has accused the McCain campaign of "sowing the seeds of hatred and division" in their campaign rallies where supporters have yelled out things like "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" and various racial epithets which we won't repeat here without so much as a comment of their impropriety from McCain and Palin. In voicing his offense, McCain had the hubris to ignore his silence in these occasions and state that he has repudiated all such slanders against Senator Obama.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich writes a scathing column illuminating the soft racism that McCain's campaign has been quietly encouraging.

Don't expect Senator John McCain to show up for the last debate of this year's presidential campaign, to be held tonight at 8pm Central time in Hempstead, New York, with the sort of negative attacks that we've been seeing from his campaign both in TV ads and personally from the Senator and his running mate. Recent polling has shown that McCain's attacks have backfired, hurting him far more than they have Senator Obama. Considering how much the McCain campaign has been trying to "play to the crowd" lately with gimmicky rescue plans and gimmicky vice presidential picks, it seems likely that he'll respond to the poll by scaling back those attacks.