Today South Carolina Republicans will reveal their choice to take on President Barack Obama in November. A few things worth noting as we wait for the results tonight.

Thing 1: South Carolinians get to vote on Saturday, which is pretty darn great. Tuesday voting was designed to fit the scheduling needs of 19th century farmers. A Gallup/Americapedia poll conducted last week found less than one percent of today’s Americans are actually 19th century farmers. Americans picked Tuesday voting back-in-the-day to be considerate of people’s jobs. Why not be practical today, too? Saturday and Sunday are the days most people have off work. Let’s have all elections on weekends, please.

Thing 2: If you want to use “polls” and “momentum” to guess who’s going to win, don’t just pick one poll, or several polls at random. Instead, go to one of the web sites that combine the results of several polls to generate an average. We like the Real Clear Politics poll of polls because it’s easy to read. The latest average has Newt Gingrich ahead and improved in South Carolina. We’re not predicting he’s going to win tonight, but polls are.

Thing 3: If you’re ever puzzled or annoyed by cable news coverage of presidential politics, remember this: More than 5 million viewers watched Thursday’s Republican debate on CNN, roughly nine times as many viewers as CNN had in the same time period the night before. If it seems like it TV networks are very interested in presenting the Presidential race like a sporting contest/competitive reality show, it’s because they are.