Florida Election Results: Obama Wins Sunshine State
After days of delays, Florida has finally declared that Barack Obama won the state and will pocket its electoral votes in his final tally for the 2012 presidential race.
With Florida's 29 electoral votes under his belt, Obama leads Romney by 126 votes in the final Electoral College tally. The president secured 332 electoral votes on Election Day, compared to 206 for his Republican challenger.
When the Sunshine State's 67 counties finally finished reporting all election results on Saturday, Obama had pulled in 50 percent of votes in the state, while the GOP nominee Romney finished with about 49.1 percent, USA Today reported.
A margin of approximately 74,000 votes separated the two candidates, making the race in Florida incredibly tight. But as Obama had secured another four years in the White House before Florida was close to reporting its final result, the election's outcome would not have changed had Romney prevailed in Florida.
His victory in Florida means President Obama secured wins in eight of the nine swing states that pundits predicted would ultimately decide the winner of the election. The incumbent won in Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada. Of the key battleground states, he lost only North Carolina to Romney.
Election officials in Florida told CBS News that the reasons behind the extended delay are high turnout and the fact that the unusually long ballot in that state included 11 amendments to the state's constitution.
Earl Lennard, the supervisor of elections in Hillsborogh County, said those factors have slowed down the process significantly.
"There's three pages, front and back, which equals six pages, actually, of ballot," Lennard said. "It takes a long time to process that ballot. It also takes a longer period of time for the voter to vote that ballot."
