The moment we've all been waiting for: As the popular vote continues to be counted, Mitt Romney's share is now officially rounded to 47 percent. The latest data, as compiled by Dave Wasserman, has President Barack Obama at 50.8 percent of the vote, compared to 47.49 percent for Romney.
What lucky county pushed Romney below 47.5 percent? Los Angeles.
CA: Los Angeles County reports 45,326 new @BarackObama votes, 12,469 @MittRomney. https://t.co/...' @Redistrict via web
And with that, the moment many have been waiting for has arrived. @MittRomney drops to 47.49% of the popular vote: https://t.co/...' @Redistrict via web
Another milestone reached today:
PA: 10,236 new votes for @BarackObama, 8,743 for @MittRomney. U.S. surpasses 127 million POTUS votes (131.3M in '08): https://t.co/...' @Redistrict via web
We're still waiting on several million more votes. California alone has just shy of 1 million votes remaining to be counted, including another 196,621 from Los Angeles County. New York is sitting on another million or so. And most states are still sitting on uncounted (or unreported) ballots. In fact, just 12 states have final certified vote tallies.
So what drama is left? Well, if Obama surpasses 51 percent, he'll be just the fourth third president in the last 100 years to do so twice, and the last since Ronald Reagan Dwight Eisenhower. That shouldn't be a problem given what's left to be counted.
It will also be interesting to see whether this year's vote tally meets or exceeds that of 2008. New York and California will close roughly half the gap. Are there enough votes left elsewhere? Seems doubtful. We'll be looking at state-by-state turnout numbers after all the votes are counted, but thus far, it looks like those states with competitive races had stronger turnout, while everyone else tapered off.
1:17 PM PT:
PA (whoa): Philadelphia reports 29,531 new @BarackObama votes, 4,484 @MittRomney. Romney down to 47.48%: https://t.co/...' @Redistrict via web
1:22 PM PT: Spiderboy12 in the comments corrects me, and adds some great additional factoids:
Ronald Reagan didn't surpass 51% twice. (18+ / 0-)
He did so only once, in 1984.
In 1980, he got 50.75% of the popular vote. Almost 10% higher than Jimmy Carter (who got 41.01%), but still not quite 51%.
If Obama does manage to pass 51% twice, he'll only be the sixth US president to do so since 1824, and third Democrat. The other five are Andrew Jackson, US Grant, William McKinley, Franklin Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower.
His percentage of the popular vote would also rank as the eighth highest of all time for all Democratic nominees, behind only Andrew Jackson (twice), FDR (four times), LBJ, and his own performance in 2008. (He would just edge out Sam Tilden (1876), Franklin Pierce (1852) and Martin Van Buren (1836), all of whom received barely under 51%.)
1:56 PM PT: Thanks DC!
DC's new provisional votes push @BarackObama up to 50.82% of U.S. popular vote, @MittRomney down to 47.47%: https://t.co/...' @Redistrict via web
Scrumptious!
Also, thanks to huge DC turnout, @BarackObama raw vote lead over @MittRomney just surpassed 4.25 million: https://t.co/...' @Redistrict via web
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