REPORT: Obama scores impressive victories

Obama scored impressive victories across the country, so much so that the big build-up over Ohio, Virginia and Florida fizzled. Obama reached the 270 electoral votes needed for election even without those three states, rolling up wins in Democratic strongholds and carrying Nevada, Iowa and Colorado.   

In the end, he also won Ohio and Virginia and was ahead in Florida, where votes were still being counted.   

Romney, the multimillionaire former private equity executive, came back from a series of campaign stumbles to make it close after besting the president in the first of three presidential debates. it still wasn't clear early on Wednesday whether the president won the key battleground state of Florida.   

The vote in the state, which introduced the terms "hanging chads" and "butterfly ballots" to the masses in its historic 2000 presidential election, was too close to call long after Republican challenger Mitt Romney conceded his loss.   

Early Wednesday morning, Obama was edging out Romney by about 45,000 votes, or 0.53 percentage points, out of a total of 8.27 million votes cast in Florida, with about 99 percent of the votes counted. Florida accounts for 29 of the 270 votes in the electoral college a candidate needs to win the presidency. That is more than any other swing state, and by many accounts the fourth-largest state was a must-win for Romney.   

Most recent polls had given Romney an edge over the incumbent in Florida, where the economic recovery has been slower than in other states and long-term unemployment has reached record highs.   

But registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in Florida by about 5 percentage points and Romney faced multiple headwinds in the state.


REUTERS

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