With nearly 3.9 million Florida votes counted, President Obama leads Governor Romney by 1,885 votes, about 1/20 of 1% of the total. For scale, the third-party candidates have received 58,026 Florida votes so far. Even without hanging chads and a strong third-party candidate, the Florida winner may not be known for several days or weeks.
Nate Silver's last forecast gave 313 electoral votes to President Obama and 224 to Governor Romney. Virginia (13 electoral votes), which he had called for Mr. Obama, is coming in toward Mr. Romney by about 4 points. That changes the result to 300 for Mr. Obama and 237 for Mr. Romney. Florida, which Mr. Silver had also called for Mr. Obama, albeit by a narrower margin of probability (50.3%) than any other state, has 29 electoral votes. If Mr. Romney wins Florida, then the electoral college vote becomes 271for the President and 267 for Governor Romney: close enough to make the wills and whims of the individual electors something of great interest: a defection of two Democratic electors throws the election into the House of Representatives.
