I wasn’t planning on following the election too closely this year, but I can’t help myself considering the enticing tools available online. So here’s my online election arsenal for the day:

I’m using Pollster.com to follow polling data (a couple of other projection sites are covered in Mashable’s 12 Presidential Poll and Electoral Projection Resources) and for twitter eye candy there’s the Election Results According to Twitter.

For coverage:
Election 2008 on Current tv
“Co-hosted by Digg and Twitter, with video from 12seconds.tv, and with a Live DJ set by Diplo, Current is uniting the best of social media with a real-time broadcast of the most important results, facts and information and giving you a completely new way to experience election night.”

Leo Laporte w/ Jason Goldberg
“…if you’re looking for election coverage with a tech twist, Jason Goldberg, the founder, will also be covering the election with Leo Laporte live on This Week in Tech on Tuesday, Nov 4 @ 8 pm EST/ 5 pm PST.”

Mashable’s The Ultimate Election Day 2008 Toolkit has two links I particularly like and will be using whenever there’s no one looking:

Power Readers in Politics a feature for Google Reader users, “..it tracks things tossed into the Shared Items firehose by the presidential campaigns as well bloggers and journalists like Arianna Huffington and Patrick Ruffini.”

Youtube’s VideoYourVote experiment (in conjection with PBS) to document people’s experiences at the polls. The best videos will then be included in PBS’ election day coverage (there’s also a fantastic article on Mashable profiling Youtube’s contributions to the election that’s worth a read).

As always, CNN & USA Today blow it out the park with the visuals:

CNN Electoral Map – Not only do you get current projections, you can tweak the map to run your own scenarios.

USAToday.com – More often than not, these guys provide great data visuals. This time it’s an easy way to eyeball the the percentage of difference between the candidates.

UPDATE: AnOrangeAmerica.com is the latest election tool to join the arsenal. It would have remained “just another cool app”, but I like Tropicana’s OJ so I’ll give it the nod for coolest election app. Read more about it here. HT: Simon.