We didn't have the final totals for 2008 until after Thanksgiving Day. There are literally millions of votes out there that will be posted, which will give us a better picture of what happened. Having been involved in the VA effort,including ORCA, we did a great job in getting out our voters.
In 2008 Obama won VA with 1,959,532 to McCain's 1,725,005. In 2012, so far with 97% of the vote counted, Obama has 1,885,952 to Romney's 1,773,982. Romney already has 50,000 more votes than McCain had total.
Kaine running for the senate has 30,000 more votes than Obama has and Allen has 36,000 less than Romney.
We will see how the final vote comes out, but I cannot fault Romney in VA for getting out the vote. Here in Fairfax County we reduced Obama's margin of victory from 110,000 to 90,000. Obama got 50,000 less than last time and we had 27,000 less for the GOP.
Yesterday afternoon I started a comparison of McCain in 2008 and Romney this year, then realized quickly that many states still had 5%-10%, or more of their votes still not counted. Stopped working on it and still haven’t resumed. Now it’s being discussed widely so some in the media should produce some decent analysis soon.
The puzzle for me is still why, apparently, the level of Republican enthusiasm was so overestimated by many pundits, and even all those early voting comparisons that were supposed to favor Republicans. Some really erroneous assumptions were latched onto by Dick Morris and others. I doubt Morris will recover from this one.