November 6, 2008 12:24pm by David Farrar

Final US election results

The final electoral college counts looks to be 364 for Obama and 174 for McCain. North Carolina and Missouri are not final but look to go to Obama and McCain respectively. That is around the scale of Clinton in 1996 who won by 379 to 159.

On the popular vote Obama has 63,687,862 to 56,283,891 for McCain – 53% to 46%. Obama got around 1,600,000 more votes that Bush did in 2004.

The states Obama picked up from Bush are Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada.

In the Senate the Democrats did quite well but well back on their target of. They started with 51 seats (including two Independents) and now have 56 – picking up North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Colorado. Sadly they did not defeat Ted Stevens in Alaska.

In the House they picked up 19 seats and the balance is now 254 to 174 with 7 undecided.

The exit poll results are quite interesting also:

Obama vs McCain was 49% to 48% amongst men and 56% to 43% amongst women
White men went McCain 57% to 41% and white women 53% to 46%
Blacks went 95% for Obama
Latinos around 67% for Obama
McCain won over 65s 53% to 45% while Obama won under 30s by 66% to 32%
Obama won amongst the 6% earning over $200K by 52% to 46%
14% of white Democrats voted for McCain while 8% of white Republicans voted for Obama
20% of Conservatives voted Obama
11% were first time voters and they went Obama 69% to 30%

And then there were state ballots:

Arizona voted to bay gay marriage and hiring illegal immigrants
Arkansas banned gay couples adopting children
California also voted to ban gay marriage but against for parental notification of teenage abortions
Colorado voted to end against ending affirmative action and not to ban abortion by defining human life as beginning at conception
Florida voted to ban gay marriage
Maryland voted to allow a video lottery
Massachusetts voted not to repeal state income tax
Michigan voted to allow medical marijuana and stem cell research
Nebraska voted to end affirmative action
South Dakota voted not to ban abortion except for mother’s health, incest or rape
Washington voted to allow doctor-assisted suicide