Obama wins Florida, 4 days after re-election

GlobalPost

It's official: Barack Obama won Florida.

The state was finally called for the president today, four days after he was declared the winner of the 2012 US election.

Less than one percent, or around 74,000 ballots, separated Obama from his Republican challenger Mitt Romney: 50 percent of Floridians voted blue and 49.1 percent voted red, according to the Associated Press.

The margin was just wide enough to avoid a recount, however, which is automatically triggered when the final result is within half a percentage point.

GlobalPost's full election coverage

Romney had already accepted he wouldn't win the state. His Florida campaign advisor, Brett Doster, told the Miami Herald on Thursday that he expected the last remaining votes to be counted would mostly go to Obama – much to the Romney campaign's regret.

"The numbers in Florida show this was winnable," Doster said. "We thought based on our polling and range of organization that we had done what we needed to win. Obviously, we didn't, and for that I and every other operative in Florida has a sick feeling that we left something on the table."

Florida took longer than any other state to declare partly because the result was so close and partly because polls didn't close until late on the night of Nov. 6, the AP said. Lines were so long at some polling stations that some people didn't cast their vote until after midnight.

The late victory gives President Obama an extra 29 electoral votes, bringing his final tally to 332. Romney won 206.

Obama took seven other swing states along with Florida, winning Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada.

North Carolina was the only key battleground he lost.

More from GlobalPost: Now the election's finished, the (Grand Old) Party's over

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