It’s time for the highly anticipated follow-up to my earlier blog entry “2008: America Decides”, so without further adieu..
Senator John McCain conceded defeat early on November 4th (US time) as an overwhelming show of support had Senator Barack Obama well clear of McCain in Electoral College votes alone.
At the time I’m writing this blog entry (using CNN as the source of data) Obama has 338 Electoral College votes against McCain’s paltry 163.
A winner is declared with 270 Electoral votes. This is a clear message being delivered by the voting populace of the United States.
In 2004, George W Bush won the election by a tiny 286 Electoral votes against John Kerry’s 252 votes.
Obama took California (55 EC votes), Illinois (21 EC Votes) and New York (31 EC votes) by an average of 61% (or nearly two thirds) of the vote in those states – a huge majority.
Some of the larger states came with a “smaller” margin of victory – Pennsylvania (21 EC votes) by 11%, Michigan (17 EC votes) by 16% and New Jersey (15 EC votes) by 15%.
The closest win came in Florida (27 EC votes) where Obama won with about a 2% margin and Ohio (20 EC votes) by roughly 4%. North Carolina (15 EC votes) and Indiana (11 EC votes) voted Obama by roughly 1% also. This is why they call them “Battleground States”!
Below is a copy of the election map, I’ve highlighted the political leanings of the so called “Bible Belt” – nearly all Republican save for the good people of South Carolina.
The middle of the United States (north to south) – North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas (58 EC votes combined) remained strongly Republican voting McCain by an average margin of roughly 13% – the largest swing in those states coming from Oklahoma! (7 EC votes) – probably not Obama’s favourite musical 🙂
The state who loves the new President-elect the most appears to be Hawaii where Obama received 72% of the vote. Aloha!
