THE COUNT: Hour-by-Hour

Here, hour by hour (in Eastern Standard Time), is how the ballot boxes told one of the big political stories of the generation:

8 to 9 o'clock. Nixon winged ahead in early-bird returns scattered east of the Rockies (he led 2 to 1 in Kansas alone). But barely had the ABC and CBS electronic brains prematurely predicted a G.O.P. sweep than the Republicans conceded Connecticut by some 90,000—a magic figure that Democrats read as a sure sign of a sweep in the big marathon industrial states. But perhaps some of the Connecticut vote...