The first Tuesday after the first Monday.

Can't wait until November to tally up the electoral votes? Here's a site that will do it for you. They take the most current poll in each state as a predictor of actual Election Night results, and add them up as a predictor of electoral vote totals.

The count changes almost daily, as new polls come in, so you can play out your own scenarios. Last week, if one Kerry-leaning state (Missouri) went for Bush and all the others went according to the current polls, there would have been a 269-269 tie, throwing the selection of the president into the House, where the likely majority of state delegations would be Republican even if the majority of representatives were Democratic (there are a lot of western states with one Republican representative; each counts as much as California or New York in this particular Constitutional role), so Bush would be re-elected. On the other hand, the Vice President is chosen by the Senate, and if the Democrats regained a majority (requiring a two-seat pickup), John Edwards would be the Vice-President. Yes, we could end up with a Bush-Edwards administration.

At the moment: Kerry leads in this calculation, 307-231. But many states have one candidate leading by less than the margin of error in that state's poll, and even more states have the lead less than the margin of error plus undecided voters.

To me, the most amazing statistic is that Bush's lead in Virginia is only 3%, with 5% uncommitted. That's in a state where Bush won in 2000 by 8%.

And yes, I know: come back in September and October when the polls will finally start to mean something.