Caracas Chronicles

1. Each of the TV talking heads will say the phrases "jornada cívica", "con toda normalidad" and "ejercer su derecho al sufragio" at least 200 times over the length of the day, pausing only to ritually praise the vote as a "muestra de civismo".

2. Some fool is going to screw it up in the voting booth, press the wrong button and end up with a "comprobante" that shows he voted for a different candidate than the one he intended to support. He’ll huff and puff about this, a clip of it will end up on YouTube, and Kepler will link to it in every single comments thread about this (or any other) election until 2012.

3. A friend/relative who’s a mesa member in a middle class area will call you up at about 7 p.m. to tell you we’re definitely going to get the majority in the assembly because MUD won by 80-20 in her centro.

4. During the 25-30 second news spots about it on the BBC World Service and on CNNi, the anchors will pronounce it "sha-VEZ".

5. At around 9 p.m. a crazy rumor is going to land in your inbox from somebody who knows somebody who’s "really in the know."

6. Tibisay Lucena is going to announce results wearing a mullet.

7. At least one disappointed MUD guy who barely missed his seat will cry fraud without presenting any hard evidence. A clip will go on a constant loop on VTV, and be treated as *the* oppo position on Aporrea.org

8. However many seats we get, Torres will write in to explain in detail how we would’ve gotten double if we’d just promised free petrocash distribution. 

9. I will write an insufferable, gloaty post the next day about how right the Election Forecasting Tool was, and follow it up with a string of tweets that @puzkas will ignore.

10. By the end of next week, it’ll be perfectly clear who’s running for the 2012 nomination just by watching who in the opposition is slinging mud at whom.