Ungrateful For Me To Ask . What Happened In North Carolina ?

[Proud Public Servant]

18. Remember, Obama lost ground everywhere

It was a big win, but the fact is that Obama both got fewer votes and won his states by smaller margins than in 2008, across the board (as far as I can tell). He won Florida by 240,000 votes last time; he's up 40,000 votes at the moment. He won Ohio by 250,000 votes last time; he's now on track to win by only 110,000. Nor was that just a swing-state pattern; deep-blue states like Hawaii and Vermont also gave him less cushion in his victories. Even in his strongest constituency -- DC -- There were 23,000 fewer votes cast, and they all came out of Obama's pool (Romney, by contrast, got almost exactly the same number of votes as McCain).

So if the pattern was that the president was going to come in with lower vote totals and tighter margins across the board, it makes sense that the places that he won by razor-thin margins -- places where he had no cushion, no votes he could afford losing -- would flip. His three closest margins were in IN, NC, and NE-2. So there it is.