President Obama continues to cruise to a sizeable lead in the popular vote. And when you take into account how many ballots are left to be counted in California, the picture looks even better.
What a delight it is to watch Mittens' popular vote share continue to plummet as the votes pour in from around the country. My favorite website on which to follow these vote counts is uselectionatlas.com because they usually have the latest figures.
As of now, here are the popular vote counts:
Obama 63,165,036 (50.66%)
Romney 59,470,414 (47.69%)
Others 2,055,855 (1.65%)
TOTAL 124,691,305
However, and this is a big however, these totals do not include the latest updates from the California Secretary of State. Once we include these latest figures, we have
Obama 63,357,056 (50.69%)
Romney 59,559,878 (47.66%)
Others 2,063,899 (1.65%)
TOTAL 124,980,833
This is great news, but here's the kicker. According to the CA SOS website, there are still over 1.7 million ballots to be counted in California. About 60% of these ballots are from very liberal counties such as Santa Clara, Los Angeles, and Monterey. Let's say 1.6 million of these ballots end up being counted as valid, and Obama wins them by about 62% to 36%, with 2% voting for third-party candidates. Normally, I would suggest splitting them according to current popular vote percentages - 60% for Obama and 38% for Mittens - but you have to remember not only where most of these ballots are coming from but also that over half of these ballots are provisional and provisional ballots favor Democrats disproportionately. Also, the more these types of votes have been counted over the past few days, the more Obama's lead grows not only in terms of mere votes cast, but also as a percentage of votes cast.
So if we divide the votes based on a 62% to 36% split, we end up with the following:
Obama 992,000
Romney 576,000
Others 32,000
Now let's add these votes to the popular vote total and see what happens to Mittens' numbers.
Obama 64,349,056 (50.84)
Romney 60,135,878 (47.51)
Others 2,095,899 (1.66%)
TOTAL 126,580,833
So as we can see here, adding a fair projection of the remaining California ballots brings Romney to just a hair above 47.5%. Now, I realize that more conservative states like Arizona and Missouri are still counting votes as well, but so are states like Washington, Oregon, and Maryland. Not only that, New York has not updated their election returns since election night and each county has 25 days to finish counting any outstanding ballots. When I inquired to the New York Secretary of State which ballots were left to count, I got this reply:
We do not post results until they are official and certified by the county
boards of elections which will not happen until all affidavit, emergency and
absentee ballots are counted. The locals boards of elections have 25 days
to complete this process after the elction. After that, the State Board of
Canvassers must vote to certify the local board's results. That should
happen at our December Board meeting.
If you have any additional questions, please let us know.
Instinct tells me that there will be a significant amount of ballots added to the final vote counts in New York. A pervading sense of irony along with a dose of karmic justice would indicate that the final ballots counted in New York will push Mittens' percentage of the popular vote below 47.5% so that history will forever remember that Willard Mitt Romney, who trashed 47% of the country as freeloaders, got 47% of the popular vote in 2012.