Where to Get Live Election Night Coverage Online

Here's how to stay tuned in on election night, whatever your political leaning and technological preference

By Liz Gannes

The 2008 election and online video have had a lot of special moments together: The CNN-YouTube primary debates. Obama Girl. Will.i.am's "Yes We Can." Saturday Night Live's "Fey-lin" skits.

And even though those examples might lean to the left, online video isn't just a liberal thing. Both the Obama and McCain campaigns have active YouTube accounts. In September, the McCain account had nearly three times as many average views per video as its rival's. And no fewer than nine outlets offered live online video of the Presidential debates.

But those were simply viral videos and two-hour events coming straight from the official debate stream. For election night, the fun starts early and could continue all night. There will be red and blue states to call, voter fraud to police, polling lines to record, partisan parties to tune into, and pundits, pundits, pundits. For those who want more detail, perspective, or partisanship than TV broadcasts offer—or for the election-obsessive looking to build a multiplatform election-night command center—we've sniffed out a few of the options to choose from.

Live from Battleground States

Don't trust the talking heads to do your election analysis? Try your hand at crunching the numbers. TV networks and newspapers will be offering frequently updated maps and data for your perusal online.

On Election Day, ABC News will offer live streams of its own newscast, the scene at both McCain and Obama campaign headquarters, and a stream from roving reporters in battleground states. It will also offer a live results map, searchable exit polling data, live blogging and results via SMS. CBS News will be offering county-by-county results updated every minute, live blogging, as well as a simulcast of its TV coverage, starting at 6:30 p.m. ET. Around 2 a.m,, Katie Couric will host a live Webcast on CBSNews.com and CNET.com to address participants' questions.

There are also plenty of tools on the cable networks' sites. MSNBC, in particular, has a trove of tech tools, including blogger widgets. We really liked its vote tally interface-plus-live stream for the Super Tuesday primary, which displayed tons of information in one place.

Plenty of Partisan Punditry

The New York Times will also offer online video updates every half-hour from 7 p.m. to 12 a.m. ET, with reports from Times political correspondents. These days, the newspaper's site is a powerhouse of infographics (and we don't mean static USA Today pie charts), and it will continue to offer up interactive graphs and maps on election night.

If you're looking for election night coverage by and for people like you, there are plenty of sites to turn to. The left-leaning blog Talking Points Memo, for instance, has really thrived this election season, raking in a record 16.3 million YouTube video views in September.

For its election night coverage, the site will be live-streaming (most likely using the cell phone-based service Qik from Obama's Chicago headquarters) and providing live election results via a map created in partnership with Google (GOOG). It will also be live-blogging and posting TV news clips it records off network TV. But political parties aren't the only interest groups. Terra.com, for instance, will offer live video reporting focused on Latinos in both Spanish and English.