Vote counting update thread

[Benj]

Obama's margin of victory in Colorado (now 5.17%) is greater than his margin in PA (5.02%). This means that at this point, Pennsylvania was the tipping point state (that gave Obama his 270th electoral vote).

That means the tipping point in this election was a state that the Republicans haven't won for President since the 1980s, one of the Kerry states, and a state where the Dems have a registration advantage of over 1 million

Pennsylvania is one of the three swing states with a bunch of ballots still uncounted (along with Ohio and Michigan), so this may change back. (At least, turnout is way down in those three states from 2008, while it's not down in any other swing state.)

[Benj]

Obama has now got over 60% in California and is now leading in Riverside county.

Obama is now leading in the rich white Sunbelt while still getting decimated in coal country? Has America decided to collectively troll me?

Riverside County hasn't been rich or white in a couple of decades. It was 46% Hispanic at the 2010 census and has below-average per capita income. Voting patterns have just been slow to catch up to demographics (because a lot of the Hispanic residents are migrant farm workers in the Coachella Valley).

[Benj]

Is it possible for Obama to overtake in Fresno County or is it too late?

The county website doesn't say how many votes are left to count, but based on statewide turnout vs 2008, I'd guess about 20,000.  Possible, yes, it'll be close .

It's not uniform, though. Fresno last reported new results before Thanksgiving (on 11/21) according to the SOS's website, but claims not to be finished. (Unfortunately, only a few counties, notably Alameda, claim to be finished counting, so it's not that helpful.)

I think Trinity County is the most likely to flip to Obama of all CA counties that could--it hasn't reported any new votes since election night, but surely there are at least a few provisionals and late absentees there, and Romney's only ahead by 55 votes (which, admittedly, is 1.09%, but the shifts have been bigger than that in most counties that have reported late votes). There were 6,430 votes in Trinity County in 2008, but only 5,030 have been counted so far this year.

Also worth watching to see if Stanislaus County goes to Obama >50%. He's at 49.95% right now.

[Benj]

Which counties have flipped from Election Night?

Riverside, CA
Latah, ID

any others...

Centre, PA, Stanislaus, CA and Stark, OH (not yet on Atlas, but it has flipped), off the top of my head.

[Benj]

New vote dump in some California counties. Notably, Santa Clara County (San Jose) has now cleared 70% for Obama, while Stanislaus County (Modesto) has cleared 50%. Additionally, Stanislaus, San Joaquin (Stockton) and Merced Counties have now swung to Obama--that's a sign of really dramatic change in that part of California. Los Angeles County and Kern County (Bakersfield) have now also swung to Obama. Not sure if San Francisco County had swung towards Obama before, but it has now.

[Benj]

CA and NY appear to be the only states with a chance of swinging to Obama (after AK, LA, MS, MD, NJ). How likely would CA and NY be?

NY seems likely as nearly all of the outstanding votes are in the four urban counties of NYC. California is impossible; there are only a few thousand votes left to count.

[Benj]

This is truly beyond pathetic. Not even a Fourth-World country would still be counting votes.

Well thanks to all the vote-by-mail, encouraged mostly by Democrats, it takes forever.  If 90% of voters did so on Election Day at their precinct, we'd be done

Washington's turnout was 81%; the highest in the county.

'Shame on the Democrats for encouraging that

Actually, Minnesota had the highest turnout: ca. 75%

WA is ranked 10th in turnout.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=164873.msg3546896#msg3546896

Might be a VAP v. Registration issue?

[Benj]

So where are we on this?  What are the updated figures?  

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjYj9mXElO_QdHpla01oWE1jOFZRbnhJZkZpVFNKeVE#gid=19

The following states have yet to certify their results:

California
Hawaii
Nebraska
New Mexico
New York
Pennsylvania
Tennessee
Virginia
West Virginia

Of those, only New York has a significant number of votes left to count, but there are a lot of outstanding votes in New York, almost all in New York City. Some of the above may be done counting but have yet to certify their results. All other states are ostensibly completely done counting unless they find a bunch of uncounted votes in a warehouse next summer, like New York did in 2009. (The basic message seems to be that, of all states, New York is most incompetent at counting ballots, and it's a good thing the state is not competitive.)

Note that Atlas numbers are not up-to-date for a fair number of states that have finished their counts recently. NJ certified just today, I believe, and it counted a ton of ballots in the past couple of days.

[Benj]

Note that Atlas numbers are not up-to-date for a fair number of states that have finished their counts recently. NJ certified just today, I believe, and it counted a ton of ballots in the past couple of days.

NJ did certify today, meaning it had its most Democratic performance since 1964. Also, Salem County ends in a tie.

Really? Dave Wasserman has Obama leading by 242 votes in his county numbers, which add up to the final statewide results.

Also, his town breakdown for Middlesex County does back up the apparent massive swing to Obama among Asians. Looks like there were big swings to Obama in heavily Asian Edison and South Brunswick.

[Benj]

Interesting to note that Obama leads by 4,682,797 overall, in CA by 3,014,312 and NY by 1,700,644. So Romney leads by 32,159 in the rest of US outside those two states.

Obama would still win the EV 248-206 on that result, though. In fact, you could take out all of the 60+% Obama states, and Obama would still win the EV, 213-206, if I did the math right.

[Benj]

Wee question...as I'm not American I don't understand how they can call an election on election day when actually there were millions of votes uncounted, anyone cares to elaborate?

Statistics

That's hardly enough to call an election when you only counted 60% of the votes

If you have all the precincts (or even most of them) with some of the vote in, you can make a very good call. The rest of the votes coming in from that area isn't going to differ significantly from what came before.

Also, way more than 60% of the votes were counted by the end of election night. Around 85-90% of the votes were counted. Additionally, it was known that most of the outstanding votes were, at the time, in noncompetitive states like California, New York and Washington.

[Benj]

So what are the national numbers and percents now?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Are they done counting yet, or do we have to wait until Christmas?  

I don't know what's wrong with New York, but they haven't counted anything in the past week or so. That's where 99% of the remaining uncounted votes are. I think a few votes have trickled in elsewhere, but not enough to be interesting. Other than New York, Hawaii and West Virginia have yet to certify their results (but it's unclear whether they're done counting or not).

Current national numbers are 50.97-47.29. Obama will end up over 51% once New York is done; there are definitely enough votes.

[Benj]

Dave has no write-in votes in the totals for Washington state, WV and Missouri.
Ohio, Utah and PA write in totals are incomplete.  Some counties don't have them listed yet.

Some California counties' vote totals declined slightly from what I had off the county clerks' websites, perhaps indicating that some write in ballots were dropped from the count before certification

I've included write-in votes on my spreadsheet if you're interested in taking a look at that. The link is in my signature.

Dave Wasserman says Hawaii hasn't certified because there are still disputes about some of the minor races which is holding up the entire process.

I'd like to know: why hasn't New York finished counting? They should have done so before the electoral college met on December 17th. Don't they believe in due process any more?

There's a big problem with vote counting in the USA in my opinion. In most countries it's recognised that you have to count all the votes within a few days, even if it doesn't affect the result. But the attitude in a lot of American states seems to be: "We know who the winner is, so what's the point in finishing counting all the votes?" That's the type of attitude you'd expert in a third-world country rather than the world's number one superpower.

New York still has 413,000 votes to count according to Wasserman and yet the New York electors have already cast their ballots. That isn't a good example of democracy in action.

Another argument for the electoral college. In our current system, 400K votes from New York don't matter because it's clear who won the state, and even if they all go to Romney it won't change the electoral map. But imagine a popular vote system, where 400K votes from any state could alter the outcome of a close election. Luckily, with the way things are now, outstanding ballots will only affect an election if they come from a very close state that acts as a tipping point in the electoral college totals, so the chances of a hung election are slimmer.

Not really. The only reason vote counting is taking so long is that no one cares. If it actually mattered, they'd have finished counting ages ago.

[Benj]

Is Obama over or under 50% in Staten Island?

Looks like he's over 50%. Seems to be about 154,000 votes in Staten Island, about 78,000 of them for Obama. But I may be reading Dave Wasserman's numbers wrong.