Obama Holds Slim Lead In Florida, Votes Still Being Tallied
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – While the presidency has already been decided, the state of Florida still hasn't been declared to be a win for President Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.
Nine counties in Florida, including Miami-Dade County, are still counting absentee ballots. Miami-Dade County and others were plagued with extremely long wait times in early voting and even on Election Day.
Some individual precincts in Miami-Dade County had wait times of up to 6-7 hours on Election Day.
As of Wednesday afternoon, President Obama held a slim lead of 49.86% to Mitt Romney's 49.29%. By the numbers, Obama had 4,144,924 votes to Romney's 4,097,511 votes, a difference of roughly 47,413 votes.
Miami-Dade County was still sifting through roughly 20,000 ballots as of Wednesday morning, while Pinellas County said they had to count roughly 9,000 early votes on Wednesday.
Pinellas County was in the president's column by a roughly 52.2% to 46.7% margin, meaning that as of 12:30 p.m., meaning Obama has most likely won the county.
Miami-Dade County was heavily in Obama's camp, by a 62% to 38% margin as vote counting continued Wednesday morning.
Obama didn't need Florida's 29 electoral votes to win re-election. Instead, he captured several other battleground states including Ohio and Virginia.
By the math, Obama captured 303 Electoral College votes along with the nationwide popular vote. A candidate only had to capture 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency.
Some pundits had put Florida comfortably into the Romney win column in the final weeks of the campaign. However, Nate Silver's 538 Blog on the New York Times had put the race at 50-50 with an edge of less than 0.5 percent to the president.
Much like almost every other state Silver predicted, it appears his Florida prediction may have been spot on.
(TM and © Copyright 2012 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2012 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
