Nate Silver: Obama would have won without both Ohio and Florida:

The OP made a good point. Many pundits were focused on Ohio and Florida.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021773716

He was pointing out that in the current electoral college configuration Democrats enjoy a structural advantage, and Obama could have lost the popular vote by like a full percent and STILL had a good chance at winning the EC.

Fox as the election came down.

I was tracking as they went along. Here's the timeline I had:
07:00PM VT 3 3
08:00PM ME 4 7
08:00PM RI 4 11
08:00PM DC 3 14
08:00PM IL 20 34
08:00PM MD 10 44
08:00PM CT 7 51
08:00PM DE 3 54
08:00PM MA 11 65
09:00PM MI 16 81
09:04PM NY 29 110
09:10PM NJ 14 124
09:15pm PA 20 144
09:26pm WI 10 154
09:37PM NH 4 158
10:23PM NM 5 163
10:48PM MN 10 173
11:02PM CA 55 228
11:02PM HI 4 232
11:02PM WA 12 244
11:10PM IA 6 250
11:26PM OH FOX Debacle starts - 18 EV excluded
11:33PM OR 7 257 OR +10.5 not a shock or hard to call
11:47PM CO 9 266 CO +4.7 - not hard to call when polls closed at 9pm
11:51PM NV 6 272 CBS says NV +6.6 LIKELY @10:22PM so this wasn't a shock or hard to concede

Even without Ohio, the election was over around 11:51PM when NV or CO was called.

Obama had already won without VA, FL or OH.

VA then was called at 12:11pm

So a lengthy hissy fit by Rove over Ohio or Romney dragging his heels to concede didn't make tons of sense to me at the time. It was over even if they wanted to bicker about OH, VA or FL. The other states needed to win were so handily won, they were beyond reproach with the smallest margin being +4.7.

CO/NV had not yet been called, nor had OH, FL, or VA.

FL and VA were still rather close even though Obama was ahead.

It was, perhaps, still conceivable that VA could go Romney, and FL (although it's almost a week later and FL is STILL not counted, topic for another thread)

So, on the off chance that VA, FL and CO went some combination of either coming in for Romney or being too close to call on election night, OH would still determine the victor and it was imperative to stall the state and the race being called.

Rove would love nothing better than the race to go into recount/provisional ballot hell with over a week to sow media confusion, have battling lawsuits and buy time to mysteriously find votes in states with friendly partisan SoS's like Husted.

That's my picture of it, I think it was quite calculated and not this "he had a meltdown because he was so invested in the race" line that's being sold, even places like MSNBC.

http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/state/oh/president
and mouse over the counties to catch what was left - or look at a list like I did for Florida.
http://enight.elections.myflorida.com/MyElection/President/
(the above link was updated in real time)

You could see, as FOX News did, that there was nothing of substance left for Romney in Ohio. Rove talked about Hamilton county but Obama was winning that by 5 points with a bunch of the vote in.

And it went on and on until the others had been announced though he'd back off some when Obama got a 29,000 vote lead around the time FOX announced IA and OR had gone blue at 11:45pm or so.

Rove would also know their chances of winning NV were nil because of the gap that remained and how far behind they were in early voting.

So I do think Rove was in some form of denial on Ohio. How sinister that was, like you, I'm not sure what his motivation was.

But my knock is more on Romney because by 11:45 or so, it had to be clear to them that it was over. IA, NV, OR and CO had gone blue and Obama was at 272.

Further, around the same time, when FL was at 84% returned, around that time, it projected to Obama though the margin was slim enough I could allow them some slack. But VA, using the same approach looked grim because so much of the blue part of the state remained to come in with little red left for Romney - long before they called that state as I was watching it.

Like you or me could, except likely sooner with someone dedicated to monitor each state, the Romney folks would be watching the county by county returns. They would know the margins and numbers they would need to hit in key counties in order to win or lose and like you and me, can project the tallies to 100% - just like the networks do. So they would know they were screwed before the networks went on the air with it in any given state.

In my opinion, the Romney folks knew it was over well before 11:45pm and I suspect they dragged it out to deny Obama his moment and avoid as many seeing Romney's concession until after most folks had gone to bed.

Once CO was called I think the delay there was a combination of pulling Mitt out of a locked hotel bathroom and him hastily cobbling together his thoroughly unmemorable concession remarks.

So at the time Rove claimed there were still votes in OH, OH was the one putting Obama over 270 votes.
Once CO came in, it didn't matter anymore, since Obama didn't need OH.

CO is not a complicated state to project. No point it analyzing OH when CO is clearly going Obama. Start writing your concession speech. Even that nutbag O'Reilly looked grim very early in the day. Anyone with two brain cells knows that if Florida is close the rest is a lost cause.

Bush had a 26% margin of victory there in 2004 and McCain had a 22% one in 2008

Romney won it by just 13%. Could be well on its way to becoming competitive



On the other hand, look at how far West Virginia has fallen...ugh

only NC is really left over swing state, rest Romney won by 8pt and above.

I think we need to focus on NC, GA and SC. These could swing in 2018 or 2020.

Ofcourse Hilary Rodham Clinton might swing AK.

Nice.

We built that. Woot!

Once CO came in, Romney knew he had no chance of winning. Because Obama did not need FL, OH or Va at that point to win. I don't think Romney would have conceded if it was up to FL and OH. Fl is still counting and OH has a large number of outstanding provisional ballots they don't even start counting until Nov 16.