Updated 7:27 p.m.
The CNN blog party mentioned below has started, at a different url.

(Dialup warning: The main page is very heavy because the first post contains the graphic logos of each participating blog. There's a blogroll list as well.)

CNN has parked these bloggers at Tryst Coffeehouse, in the Adams Morgan section of Washington, D.C.

Some of these same bloggers are also participating tonight in an IM chat with ASAP, the younger, fresher division of The Associated Press. Updated periodically.

Think their own blogs will get any attention?

Updated 5:38 p.m.
The first exit polls -- no results, just voter trends -- on CNN:

Most important to voters:

* 42% corruption
* 40% terrorism
* 39% economy
* 37% iraq

57% disapprove of Iraq occupation, 62% voted on National rather than local issues.

Fun returns: Dan Rather will analyze election results with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert tonight at 11 on Comedy Central's live, hour-long Indecision 2006 special. Fishbowl DC missed that one.

Opinion: Lefty astrologer Nancy Waterman looks at Four Senate Races but, lacking exact birthtimes for the candidates, there's no way to know whether dominant aspects affect areas concerned with their public or private lives.

6:00 a.m.
It's showtime for political bloggers and analysts. Today will be the longest day, with lots of reader attention and nothing to report till the first dribble of returns shortly after 9 p.m.

The 7 to 7 News Blog that leads the Projo.com homepage will cover news and polling-place scenes during the day. Then at 7 p.m., Projo's Political Scene blog morphs into the Election Day Blog (new logo, same URL) at 7 p.m., covering local races and referenda, including the hot casino question.

My newsroom assignment tonight is to keep the blogs up (from home, should we have internal server problems downtown) and to use this blog to cover analysis of key races elsewhere and political blogs.

Here are some places for do-it-yourselfers to start early:

Pollster.com has final pre-election polls for each Senate, House and Governor race, with nifty charts like the one below.

If you want to peek in on the hardcore political nail-biters during the day, check out Democrat Underground and Free Republic. From the left and right, respectively, you'll catch the political headlines, very local reports from every state and a dizzying scroll of election-day emotions. Each has thousands of members, and they'll be linking to every scrap and ripple of news and rumor.

In Rhode Island, the biggest left and right blogs are R.I. Future and Anchor Rising, respectively.

It could get weird.

CNN is trying to incorporate bloggers directly into its coverage of next week's midterm elections by inviting them to an "E-lection Nite Blog Party," an event aimed at corralling some of the top online opinion makers in one place to provide instant reaction as the results come in.

The cable news network plans to host more than two dozen bloggers from across the political spectrum — including sites like RedState and Daily Kos — at a Washington Internet lounge where they can monitor the election returns on a slew of flat-screen televisions. (Each blogger will get his or her own monitor, which can be tuned to any channel.) There will be free wireless access — and plenty of food and beverages, natch.
-- L.A. Times, CNN hopes blogging is election-night blessing

Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow is not amused. He considers it Painful:

Seriously, you don’t ask newspaper columnists to sit in front of a laptop and write their columns on air, and we’re way past the point that bloggers should have to humiliate themselves like that in order to get a few seconds of airtime. This isn’t 2002, we all know what blogs are. If bloggers have something to contribute to the conversation, let them sit at a roundtable on election eve and contribute their thoughts like any other opinion writer, without treating them like teenagers at a TV dance party circa 1962 who need to be lured into the studio with “plenty of food and beverages, natch. “

We're not sure why they couldn't stay home and do this, but why turn down a free trip and a chance to meet other famous bloggers? The fun begins at 4 p.m. with bloggers from Captain's Quarters, Huffington Post, Eschaton, Crooks and Liars, Ankle Biting Pundits, Think Progress, National Review Online, Firedoglake, AmericaBlog, Redstate, La Shawn Barber's Corner, MyDD, Townhall.

Technorati, the blog search engine, saw the CNN blog up briefly today, but it's down now. Maybe when you read this it will be live again. (Sometimes a blog is tested, then unpublished until launch time.) Technorati has a clip from their "participating bloggers page" before it went 404:

Participating Bloggers Ann Althouse John Aravosis Patrick Hynes Betsy Newmark Ed Morrissey John Amato Duncan Black Christy Hardin Smith Patrick Gavin Robert Bluey Bob Cesca Glenn Reynolds La Shawn Barber Stephen Warley Marc Lamont Hill Jerome Armstrong Jim Geraghty James Joyner Pam Spaulding Scott Johnson Nick Gillespie ...

This is obviously a matching quiz with the blog list above. I'm expecting CNN will add the proper links, but Googling can sort them out if you can't wait.

Fishbowl DC has put together a 2006 Election Coverage Guide for TV and NPR, a Who's Working Tonight guide to political media.

See you back here later today...