CNN is in an Empire State of mind for the 2012 election, as it rolls out a new visual representation of results for the contest between President Barack Obama and ex-Gov. Mitt Romney that will be visible towering over the New York City skyline.
The TV network has arranged for the Empire State Building to light up its top spire lights in dueling columns of red and blue representing Obama and Romney's electoral vote tallies.
"As each state is projected by CNN and electoral votes are allocated to the candidates, a vertical LED-illuminated 'meter' located atop the spire of the building will display CNN’s running tally of the race to 270," an announcement on the network's blog stated Tuesday.
The electronic running tally is the first use of the iconic quarter-mile-high building's new custom LED panel technology, a dynamic, real-time lighting system by Philips Color Kinetics. CNN says the technology is currently unique to the Empire State Building.
And to put the icing on the cake for whichever of the two candidates pulls out a win Tuesday, the spire's lights will be switched to all blue or all red (blue for Obama, red for Romney) when the election's results are announced.
The 1,454-foot-tall building changes the coloring of its spire lights throughout the year to reflect the observance of holidays from Christmas to Veterans Day, and also commemmorates major dates like 9/11.
And this year, as the nation's voters look to their televisions and news sites for the latest on the results of the presidential election, New Yorkers will be able to simply look to the sky to see where the national tally stands.