While diaries are being penned to calculate polling error and sort the wheat from the chaff, a crucial detail is being neglected: votes are still being counted nationwide.
In fact, provisional ballots, absentees, vote-by-mail ballots – many won't be completely tabulated and finalized for weeks. Most voting totals will be certified end of month.
The important takeaway here is that President Obama's vote margin is only increasing as each hour goes by.
And he just hit a critical benchmark: 50.5 to 48.0.
This is symbolic for two reasons. One, he has just surpassed the margin of victory that George W. Bush claimed over Senator Kerry in 2004 (+2.4 pts).
And two, since election results are typically reported not to the decimal but to the integer, this will ultimately be recognized as a 51-48 victory in the history books (or pixel sets) once the dust is settled, regardless of how the decimals shift from here.
It's a small thing, but not an unimportant one. Let's keep watching history being made.