7:54 PMThe polls are closed, and the now excitement of election season really begins. They have campaigned for months now; but tonight with the highest office in the nation in their grasp, both candidates’ fates are no longer in their own hands. Preparing for a night of numerous appearances, Republican Mitt Romney is in Belmont Massachusetts, while his running mate Paul Ryan is in Janesville Wisconsin. Both President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are beginning their night in Chicago.Already analysts are projecting Vermont to go to Obama, while Indiana and Kentucky are predicted to belong to Romney. We will have to wait for further developments, as returns are just beginning to come in.By: Evan Hollyday8:10 PMWith Gov. Romney having an early lead after the first round of poll closures, the state that has perhaps received arguably the most attention, Ohio, has wrapped up voting. No Republican presidential candidate has ever taken the White House without winning Ohio. The states whose polls also close at 7:30 include North Carolina and West Virginia. Currently, according Fox News, Romney has a slight lead in Georgia and Virginia. President Obama has a major lead in South Carolina, according to Fox News. Florida is still too close to call. Nonetheless, this has been predicted to be a very close race and it is still early in the election 2012 evening.By: John Frasca
8:21 PM
As the results continue to come in, the President, still with only three electoral votes, has a lead in New Hampshire, Florida, and North Carolina. Not surprisingly, in the heart of coal country, West Virginia has gone to Mitt Romney. The Republican challenger has also just taken Georgia, giving him a total of 49 electoral votes. Here in Ohio, the race is still too close to call, but in our fellow swing state, Virginia, returns are favoring Romney.
By: Evan Hollyday8:35 PMAll eyes are on Ohio as the first estimates start to appear an hour after the polls closed. According to early predictions by CBS News, President Obama has 59 percent of the Ohio vote while Mitt Romney has 40 percent. Obama has already won several New England states while Romney has carried much of the South as well as Oklahoma. Romney has a slight lead in the electoral college – 82 electoral votes to President Obama’s 78 – but Obama has already won Massachusetts, where Romney served as governor, as well as his own home state of Illinois.By: Lindsey Zimmerman9:09 PMObama, with 79 electoral votes, is poised to sweep the Northeast. On the other side of the Mason-Dixon, Romney has taken Southeastern Republican strongholds Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas; giving him 88 electoral votes. Pundits are unable to say when Ohio will be definitively called, many agreeing that we won’t know till at least the 11 hour. Fox News has even suggested that Ohio might be in for a recount.By: Evan Hollyday10:34 PMTonight the Midwest has largely been Romney’s for the taking. Of the states that have been decided; only Michigan, Wisconsin, and the President's home state of Illinois have gone blue. However, elsewhere in the country ABC news speculates strong support from the Latino vote could help Obama take Florida, where votes in districts that are Hispanic hotbeds have yet to be counted.David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign manager, told ABC that rural voters in Ohio have not been turning out for Romney, any more than they had for McCain 4 years ago.By: Evan Hollyday10:37 PMFlorida reflects much of the nation, down to a nearly perfect fifty-fifty split; it is a conflict between the established communities of Florida and the new influx of Latinos/Hispanics.An analyst on ABC News claims that Obama and Romney are tied in economic integrity; Obama leads ten points in economic empathy. This will be key in states such as Ohio, where factory closures and job losses plague millions of American voters. As of 9:55 PM it was projected that 51 percent of Ohio had voted for Obama, while 47 percent were for Romney.To cement it, Obama has been projected the winner of Pennsylvania, a key state with 20 electoral votes. It seems the East Coast has remained solid in Obama, and has pushed Obama closer to closing the gap.In addition to this cheering news for Obama, Democrats have begun to retake the Senate. If Obama is victorious, it is a cheery picture for him for the next four years.By: Jeff Kassouf10:45 PMWith Ohio, Virginia, and Florida still too close to call, Fox News has the candidates tied at 162 electoral votes each. Currently, CNN has Governor Romney leading 158 to 147 in the electoral vote count over President Obama. In Ohio, the very important county of Fairfield has yet to have the votes counted. President Obama has a one-point lead in Florida and Governor Romney is leading in Virginia and North Carolina according to both Fox and NBC News.By: John Frasca11:15 PMThough he has dominated the rest of the southeast, Florida might be Romney’s undoing. All the cable news analysts speculate that if Romney can’t take Florida, a state that the Republicans were banking on, Ohio might cease to matter as much as it has been anticipated. At the moment, the returns show a dead heat, so Florida still could very possibly go red. However, even if Florida does go Republican, Fox News says that Romney is in a “run the table scenario.”By: Evan Hollyday11:30 PMPresident Obama officially won reelection with a grand total of 275 electoral votes. This announcement came just minutes after Fox News projected that the crucial swing state of Ohio and its eighteen electoral votes would go to Obama. For much of the night, Mitt Romney appeared to be putting up a good fight in several states, including the key battleground state of Florida, but it was not enough to push him to victory. Supporters in Obama’s hometown of Chicago are elated as they celebrate Obama’s reelection, while crowds gathered in anticipation of a Romney victory quickly deserted their respective gathering places. Vague rumors of a possible recount are still floating around, but most analysts seem confident that this is, indeed, a victory for the incumbent president.By: Lindsey Zimmerman12:26 AMOhio ended up being just as close as was predicted. Obama’s ability to maintain control of districts like Hamilton County (an area that before the 2008 election had been Republican since the 1960s), proved essential when the popular vote went down to the wire. It is interesting to play the Monday morning quarterback, and wonder if Romney had used more tact when discussing the auto bailout, if he wouldn’t have been able to swing Ohio in his favor.By: Evan Hollyday
