I was hovering over the cnn and msnbc websites to see where obama lost his margin from 2008, besides indiana. low and behind, in most states, i found maybe an average drop of 1% or so. the polls on the popular vote may have been wrong - obama may have won by 4%.
let's do some math:
california 2008: 61/37, net 3.25 million vote advantage for obama
california 2012: 59/39, net 2 million vote advantage for obama
only 70% of california is counted! we potentially have a net 1 million vote advantage left to be counted.
scrolling over other states: oregon is 75% in, washington 55% in, new york is 86% in. alaska and arizona are the only red states with less than 90% of the vote counted.
right now, there is a real chance that we gain a net 1% advantage in the popular vote, and depending on rounding, could put mitt at a very apropos 47%.
why is this important? because the media will soon turn to the meme that this was not a mandate, it was very close, almost a tie, and america is split down the middle. the media will tell us that the president and senate should compromise on the fiscal cliff, and extend the bush tax cuts. they will tell us that the house is overwhelmingly republican.
which, may or may not be true. i have a hunch that the entire advantage is due to gerrymandering and the fact that democrats live in areas heavily concentrated in democrats. we may have won a plurality of the popular vote for the house in aggregate. there is data to prove or disprove this assertion, but is it easy to obtain? does any website present a list of the vote for the house, all on a single page or in a table? outside of a lot of copy and paste from 50 different webpages and some spreadsheet work, i'm not sure how to prove this assertion.