I'm not sure if it's the credit crunch or American Airlines just taking advantage, but flight AA173 doesn't seem to have taken the transfer from Gatwick to Heathrow all that well. Gone is the ultra-modern 777 with extra leg space and fancy game-playing TV sets mounted in the back of the seats, and in is a rather rickety 767-300 with three LCD panels for the entire cabin and a bit more room than your standard Ryanair trip. And the flight is an hour longer than it used to be. Still, considering the route doesn't really have a reason to exist I can't complain too much, I guess. Plus I still the new terminal at RDU to look forward to! And that airport won't have the smug face of George Osbourne glaring at me from all the screens like in Heathrow this morning.

I miss my polls. I've lost an entire day of watching - I boarded the plane at 10 am GMT, so it was before the R2K poll was announced - I have no idea if it's still 50/45, or anything...it disturbs me that the first thing that I want to do after clearing Customs is to go to openleft.com and check everything that's been released. I can't be cut off from the information four days out! It's not right!

Although, as it turned out, the plane landed an hour early. The new RDU (open for about a week or so now) is pretty good - the long queue for customs officials has disappeared (it took me two minutes this time, and most of that was winding through the empty queue barriers), plus no more having to redo the security controls afterwards! Wonderful stuff!

My first night in the Triangle? Going out in Durham, knocking on people's doors and making sure that they know where their polling place is and that North Carolina has early voting that extends until Saturday at 5. In a non-partisan manner, I swear!