President Barack Obama is now certain to win a second term, leading in a neck-and-neck race in Florida, and by around 2% in Ohio, having easily retained Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Michigan. CNN, NBC and even Fox have now declared Obama the winner, and the Empire State Building has been lit up Democrat blue, the lights connected to CNN’s predictive hardware.
However Mitt Romney has indicated that he does not accept the network’s call of Ohio for Obama, and so there is no indication of when, or if, he will concede tonight.
Romney is on track to win Virginia and North Carolina, but Democrat strategists are upbeat about retaining Colorado and Nevada. Barring an extraordinary reversal in numbers for Florida and Ohio, or outright vote stealing, there is almost no chance for Romney to reach 270 votes.
Currently Romney is trailing by around 50,000 votes, less than 1%, in Florida, but virtually all the votes have been counted, and the sources of a reversal are drying up. The 2% lead in Ohio is even more difficult to close, though there are more votes to come in.
Should Obama win Florida, then it’s all over. He would have had to take every other swing state to compensate for the loss of those 29 electoral college votes. Should he win Florida, then together with Virginia, North Carolina, he would need to take both Ohio and Colorado to get across the line. Ohio alone wouldn’t do it, and there are no other options, with Nevada forecast for Obama.
The vote is now 49.8% to 49.3% in Florida — 3.928 million to 3.893 million votes in Obama’s favour — with 94.3% reporting. In Ohio, with exactly two-thirds of votes counted, Obama is leading 50.1% to 48.2% (1.98 million to 1.91 million votes). In Colorado, with 30% of votes reported, Obama is leading 50.8% to 47.2% (895,000 to 830,000 votes).
Romney appears to have won North Carolina by about 2% and Virginia by 1%.
There is no clear indication as to when or if there will be a concession or a claim from either camp in the next half-hour or so. Romney told reporters earlier that he had written no concession speech. He may be scribbling one now.
In the Senate, the Republicans have also had a shocking night, losing everything they realistically could. However, the Republicans have retained control of the House, with only a few seats changing hands.
The Republicans seems shell-shocked by the loss, which has proceeded almost exactly as the polls — especially Nate Silver’s blog — predicted.
So we wait, and drink, and wait …
STOP PRESS: It’s not Romney disputing Ohio. Allegedly. It’s Karl Rove on Fox News. There is disorder under heaven and the situation is excellent.
4 more years 🙂
If I could be anywhere on the planet tonight I’d choose five minutes as a fly on the wall in The Donald’s island-sized Manhattan apartment. It must be tough realising your money can’t buy everything.
“Romney appears to have won ……. Virginia by 1%.”
Nah, that was early results from all the rural counties. Didn’t I tell you yesterday VA would be blue. The margin is 2.6% (at 99% counted). The reason is that the urban counties always come in very late and are overwhelmingly blue. This is also why Ohio and Florida will firm up with more complete counting. (Does Ohio still count the hundreds of thousands of provisional votes? I presume yes, because it will make a fair addition to BO’s popular vote tally.)
The absolute best part……Murdoch and his mates spent 8 billion dollars and still didnt win. hahahahahahahahahahahaahaha.