Barack Obama '51 percent watch': Waiting on NYC to put him over the top

Gettings votes in Las Vegas, Nevada. I haven't done one of these since Friday, 12 state certifications ago. California is down to just 175,000 uncounted ballots. Almost everyone else is all in. The only big cache left of votes is in New York, where 800,000 to 1 million votes, most in New York City, remain to be counted.

The current tally is Barack Obama 50.94, Mitt Romney 47.32. Those NYC ballots will almost assuredly push Obama past the 51 percent mark'the first president to manage that feat twice since Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Obama's popular vote margin is 4.6 million. Hopefully NYC pushes it past five million, just because it's always fun to have yet one more reason to celebrate. Remember this?

Ahh, good times.

Turnout is down from 2008, but not by much'131.3 million to 128.3, or 2.3 percent. That margin will shrink further when NYC reports, but regardless, turnout will lag by a sliver, and even more so if you account for population growth. Romney has almost 800,000 more votes than John McCain got in 2008, while Obama is lagging his 2008 self by about 4 million votes.

Head below the fold if you want to see final vote totals for the newly certified states.