Nate Silver added some numbers at the end of the week -- with more to come
President Obama’s national margin over Mitt Romney has increased as additional ballots have been added to the tally. According to the terrific spreadsheet maintained by David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, Mr. Obama now leads Mr. Romney by 3.3 percentage points nationally, up from 2.5 percentage points in the count just after the election.
Turnout has grown to about 127 million voters, down from roughly 131 million in 2008. The gap could close further as additional ballots are counted. The newly counted ballots have also shifted the relative order of the states. ...538
"Tipping point" state -- Colorado -- has gone up almost another percentage point for Obama. Romney, meanwhile, invested his resources in Pennsylvania towards the end of his campaign. Silver thinks this will pay off for the GOP, though this is not the first time, as he points out. Pennsylvania "has often been a close-but-not-quite state for them." But in 2016, a valuable win there could go to the Republicans.
Silver has posted a state by state summary -- an "Elasticity-Adjusted Margin of Victory 2012" -- that's pretty astounding. If the southern states go increasingly Democratic, the Republicans don't have much to win with, even if they take Pennsylvania. The dust-'n'-gun states or big sky states -- my personal descriptions of the inland northwest, TX and Oklahoma -- will probably stay Republican. Give Texas another eight years, though... The changes are already in the wind here.
The remedy will be, god willin', a real Democratic fight for state legislatures. One by one. For the next four years. At least.
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