Live election analysis of selected key precincts in Tulsa’s mayoral election will be available tonight from a special website at the OU Center for Studies in Democracy and Culture.

Published election returns on radio and television give only a total of returns from precincts that have physically delivered their results to the Tulsa County Election Board in downtown Tulsa. These early returns do not typically reflect city-wide voting patterns.

Our analysis, however, will be focused on carefully selected precincts for which we have voting histories and demographic data, thus allowing us to report early trends in different areas of the city and to possibly project an early winner in the races for Mayor and for City Auditor (the only two city-wide posts on the ballot).

To visit our “election live” webpage, click here: http://tulsagrad.ou.edu/csdc/a_CSDC_2008/election_live/live_blog.html. Hot link here

Postings on the live blog will begin around noon today with occasional general election commentaries, but results from our key precincts will be reported beginning about 7:15 p.m. If our key precincts show a clear trend, a winner should be projected no later than 7:45 p.m. tonight.

Rodger Randle is a professor with the Department of Human Relations and director off the Center for Studies in Democracy and Culture at the University of Oklahoma.