Obama hits 60% in California

[Sbane]

Obama's strength in California was one of the more surprising results of the night. All the polls were showing him with leads half of the actual result.

Pepperdine seems to have been the most accurate pollster in the state...maybe the world is ending on Dec 21st.

[Liberalrocks]

I too was suprised by Obama's strength and I live in the Los Angeles area. I predicted Obama to be at about 57-58 percent statewide and just shy of 60%. At present Romney is actually at McCain's level of support in LA County. Romney is just barely ahead of the McCain margin statewide by a half a point. Id love to see Obama duplicate his 2008 margin statewide as well. It feels like he practically has more or less.

[DINGO Joe]

LA county reported their final results today, and they had more votes than I thought (around 33,000).  Obama's margin is 17,000 votes short of 3 million with about 55,000 votes left to count.  It'll be very close. 

Final % for LA 69.72-27.84

[Benj]

Just noticed that Tulare County has also swung towards Obama (and still has a bunch of provisional ballots left to count). For some reason Atlas says it swung towards Romney, but according to Atlas it went from 56.64-41.35 McCain to 56.52-41.43 Romney (-0.12 for Romney, +0.08 for Obama). In theory that's small enough that provisionals could change it, but I'd be somewhat surprised if Obama didn't win the ~7,000 remaining provisional ballots in Tulare outright (given the demographic splits there).

Atlas also wrongly has San Bernardino swinging towards Romney when it has now swung towards Obama on Atlas's results.

Edit: Sacramento County has also swung towards Obama, though both candidates are down from 2008 (-0.05 for Obama, -0.08 for Romney). That's extremely close, but I believe Sacramento County is completely done counting, so that's final.

[minionofmidas]

The maps are presumably based on election night results and won't be updated til the final results are in, while the numbers were updated somewhere in between.

[Benj]

The maps are presumably based on election night results and won't be updated til the final results are in, while the numbers were updated somewhere in between.

Except the swing maps have been updated a few times. Notably, Stanislaus County is now shown as swinging towards Obama, while on election night it had voted for Romney. That said, not that weird that the swing maps are slower to be updated--just wanted to point out that, even on Atlas's data, Obama has gained more in California than the swing/trend maps show.

Solano County is another county that swung towards Obama but isn't shown on the map yet.

[politicallefty]

As I mentioned in another topic, I think the main thing driving swings to Obama in certain counties has to do with demographics (primarily the Asian and Hispanic votes). The exit poll had Romney really cratering among an increased Asian vote. Obama's total margin in the state is now only 1% less than 2008, over 23% now. Also, even if Fresno County does flip, there probably aren't enough votes to get an Obama swing, so it looks like it'll end up being the outlier in the region.

[politicallefty]

Fresno County flips to Obama in the final tally, 49.72%-47.94%. That gives it a very small Republican swing compared to 2008.

[Sbane]

Hah, I knew Fresno would flip. I remember in 2010, Costa was behind until the Fresno provisional ballots got counted. So only Trinity, Butte and Nevada counties flipped to Romney, and he didn't 50% in any of them.

[Benj]

Hah, I knew Fresno would flip. I remember in 2010, Costa was behind until the Fresno provisional ballots got counted. So only Trinity, Butte and Nevada counties flipped to Romney, and he didn't 50% in any of them.

Trinity still hasn't counted about 500 ballots, and that's easily enough for it to potentially switch to Obama (Romney leads by 55 votes, Obama needs 54% of remaining ballots). The other two are done counting, though.

[DINGO Joe]

Obama's margin did break the 3 million mark as Lake and the Leftist Republic of Banana Slugs (Santa Cruz) provided their final updates.  Outside of Trinity and a final update of about 13000 votes in Santa Barbara, I think California is done.

[Ebowed]

Romney now under 60% in Kansas, too.