Update 10:04 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 7 - With all Virginia precincts finally reporting, President Barack Obama received 1,868,191 votes from Virginia voters, according to final but unofficial data from the Virginia State Board of Elections. That's 50.57 percent of the vote.
Gov. Mitt Romney received 1,767,692 votes, or 47.85 percent. The three third-party candidates on the ballot received a combined 1.42 percent of votes, and write-in candidates the remainder.
The race was too close late Tuesday night, even hours after multiple national news outlets called the race nationally.
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Original post, Tuesday, Nov. 6 updated 2 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 7
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were re-elected Tuesday night, defeating Republican challenger Mitt Romney and his vice presidential running mate Rep. Paul Ryan.
NBC News called the presidential election for Obama around 11:15 p.m. EST. The president sent a message on Twitter at 10:14 p.m. saying simply, "This happened because of you. Thank you."
The Obama campaign won the most expensive presidential race ever, with both parties raising about $2.6 billion. The race was filled with negative campaigning on both sides, from President Obama attacking Romney’s business experience with Bain Capital to Romney lambasting Obama’s handling of the economy.
The race tightened during the final months of the campaign, with gaffes and surges from both candidates. After a weak performance after the Republican Convention, Romney surged following Obama’s listless performance after the first presidential debate. Nevertheless, the president cemented a lead in battleground states heading into Tuesday’s election.
Virginia Leaning Heavily Toward Obama
Long after the presidential race nationally had been called by dozens of media outlets, Virginia's outcome remained uncertain.
As of 11:45 p.m. Tuesday with more than 94 percent of precincts reporting across Virginia, only about 50,000 votes separated the two with Obama leading. By 12:15 p.m., Obama's lead had grown to almost 60,000 votes in Virginia. And by 1:15 a.m. — just before Obama took the stage in Chicago for his acceptance speech — Obama's lead was more than 67,000.
In the 2008 presidential election, the state voted for the Democratic candidate, and since the 1990s has voted for the overall winner of the presidential race 3 out of 5 times.
Romney and Obama campaigned aggressively in Virginia. The state has typically been a Republican stronghold in recent presidential elections.
The economy was a key issue for many voters in the state, as was defense and military policies.
Areas like Loudoun and Prince William Counties — outer suburbs between the Red rural areas and Blue urban centers — will be major players this year. Both presidential candidates have made several visits to those areas this year.
“Elections in Virginia are all about the outer ring suburbs,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington.
There are five candidates for president on the Virginia ballot. Obama and Romney, plus .
Throughout the night, we'll break down how each candidate fared in Patch towns and counties across Virginia.
These results are as of 1:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 7 and are based on final but unofficial returns from the Virginia State Board of Election. At that point, 2,528 of Virginia's 2,588 precincts had reported results. It does not include some absentee, provisional or write-in numbers.
Obama Romney Goode Johnson Stein Virginia Total: 1,783,666 1,711,590 13,268 29,379 8,144 Percentage: 50.21 48.18 0.37 0.82 0.22Locality Obama Romney Goode
Johnson Stein Alexandria 71.4 percent
27.18 percent 0.13 percent 0.83 percent 0.26 percent Arlington 67.18 31.04 0.11 1.13 0.33 Fairfax 59.03
39.5 0.14
0.86 0.25 Fredericksburg 62.32
35.51 0.2
1.29 0.49 Loudoun 51.52
47.05 0.13
0.87 0.22 Prince William 56.91
41.63 0.21
0.82 0.22
For more information on the candidates and their visits to Virginia, click on the elections tab at the top of this page.
Editor's note: In an earlier version of this story, we had Jill Stein's first name incorrect. We apologize for the error.
Please take your piety elsewhere.
But stop whining. Bitter party of one, table ready.
Romney is a good man, if you listened to all the ads you would think he was a rapist or something else even worse. I can't believe people are so ignorant to believe all the commercials. Obviously they did of course! Otherwise Obama woulld never have won. I pray this country makes it another 4 years under this man, I have no faith in his ability to anything but play golf and b'ball! Great attributes for a President!
Despite all the election rhetoric, most of Obama's policies were consistent and mainstream. Obama's foreign policy is in line with Bush & Clinton (except for Bush's Iraq war). Obama's signature legislative achievement, Obamacare, was based on Romney's program in Massachusetts which was a system devised largely by conservative think tanks. I think the GOP has put themselves in a very awkward position, in which a candidate must run so far to the right to win a primary that it's impossible to win a general election.
Get over it. The American public is not about to elect someone that is as untrustworthy as Mitt Romney the candidate was. He and his campaign put out lie after lie and then would have some minion clean it up after it had supposedly resonated with 'the base'. Problem is that Mitt would have been beholden to the lunatic right wing nut fringe, Sheldon Adelson, the Koch Brothers, Wall St. hedge fund managers, Saudi oil sheiks, Chinese business tycoons and a cast of characters we can't even imagine before he ever got to down to doing anything on behalf of.average American citizens.
That said, where's all my free stuff that O'Reilly said I was waiting for?!
http://www.factcheck.org/ http://taxfoundation.org/ http://www.gao.gov/ http://www.politifact.com/ https://www.jct.gov/ http://www.statehealthfacts.org/ http://www.publicintegrity.org/ http://sunlightfoundation.com/ http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/ http://www.urban.org/ http://www.pensionrights.org/ http://www.cbpp.org/
If you would have read my comments in the 'after the 3rd debate' blog you would know what I meant. Sorry, that you didn't. Individual presidents are given much more credit than they deserve v. affect of their particular policies when first initiated on the economy. A lot of the mess we are in is because of past policies such as deregulating and consolidation of the banking industry, the mortgage fraud perpetrated on us, CDO products provided to investors by the likes of Goldman, Lehman, Bear Stearns, etc. and how these events became entwined. However, gasoline would have been poured on the fire in THMO if the likes of Mittens and Munster would have been given the reins because of their taking in gobs of money from the big banks and hedge fund managers. Question would then be what favors M&M would have to grant the banker boys in lieu of doing what is right for the American taxpayer.
I think it obvious where the lies were coming from. ie the debates when BO would insist one thing contrary to what Romney promoted and BO would as good as call him a lier. Well, the fact checkers pretty much affirmed what Romney states was indeed correct. Unfortunately for Romney when he is constantly painted as a lier, which you continue to do the dye leaves a mark thus having its negative impact. The stone is thrwon and BO is President for 4 more years and I suppose he and the rest of you will continue to Blame Bush to the end. I see no diff in change of idealogy and policy and expect continued weconomic hardship. It will only be the business man that will be able to save his butt from going under and he will have to tighten his belt, cut back, layoff and choose those avenues that will allow him to keep his head above the water to survive in business. This is not goig to help unemployment nor nor a stagnant economic growth - the consequence of a new election and the fisca lcliff confronting the country. "A clear mandate with deficit reduction - BO says" I don't think so, 50.6 % of those that voted is not a clear manadate in my book and there are millions out there despite in the opposition win that agree with me. The bottom line - WE ALL LOOSE IN THE END!!!!
KEL, I wasn't "excluded" from that thread, I merely stopped following/posting on it.
If you and others spent as much time thinking of solutions instead of trashing Obama and those who voted for him, we might get something done in this country.
We've gotten a few complaints about inappropriate language in this thread. That violates our terms of service, so we're going to shut down this comment thread and let everyone cool their heels a bit. Thanks for the passionate participation, though! Beth Lawton