After a presidential race many deemed would be "razor tight" down to the final minutes, Barack Obama won a second term as President of the United States in the early hours of Nov. 7.
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President Obama will likely end up winning his second term by 126 electoral votes. Obama currently has a 303-206 Electoral College vote lead over Romney, with all states reporting votes except Florida. The Electoral College has a tendency of inflating leads, since a candidate only needs to win by 0.1% to win all of a state's votes. Regardless, Obama's victory was the largest for an incumbent president since Ronald Reagan won a second term in 1984.
Polls going into Election Night had showed Obama wth a slight edge in key swing states, and it looks like those numbers were correct. Obama won nine out of 10 swing states.
Obama won 59,583,302 in the popular vote, while Romney won 56,960,530 of the popular vote.
The last state to be called will be Florida with its 29 electoral votes. Although, as numerous sources indicate. Obama is likely to win that state as well. Obama currently leads in Florida by over 62,000 votes (50 percent to 49 percent) with 92 percent of precincts reporting. Obama will also likely increase his lead once more precincts from the Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade County report.
With Obama likely to take Florida, The President will take a 332-206 lead in the Electoral College.
Historic ballot measures pass
American voters took historic stands on social issues Election Day with Maine, Maryland and Washington endorsing same-sex marriage, while Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational use of marijuana without a prescription.
Death and taxes were also on the ballot for many. Voters in Massachusetts rejected the "Death With Dignity Act," making Oregon and Washington the only states in the country that still allow physician-assisted suicide. California voted to keep the death penalty.
Voters in Maryland and Washington had the chance to overturn new state laws legalizing same-sex marriage. Both states upheld rights for same-sex couples, refusing to overturn the measure. Both votes were nearly 52 percent to 48 percent, according to state tallies.
Maine had repealed a state law permitting gay marriage in 2009, but had a change of heart on Nov. 6, reversing that decision to approve same-sex marriage. Minnesota, which already prohibits gay marriage, set a record for the most expensive ballot measure in history as voters there rejected a bid to add a ban against gay marriage in the state constitution.
"This is a landmark election for marriage equality," Chad Griffin, president of Human Rights Campaign said in a statement.
Voters in Washington state and Colorado voted "yes" on measures that would legalize the sale of marijuana to adults, without the need for a doctor's prescription. Likewise, Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly approved a medical marijuana ballot measure.
Facebook took stock of votes in real-time by encouraging users to employ its political features to chart their votes on a "heat map." At the top of every Facebook page, for users 18 or older, there is a button, which says "I'm Voting", or "I'm a Voter." Once users click this button, a story is posted to their Facebook Timeline telling their friends that they have voted.
The heat map displays a real-time counter of people in the U.S. who have clicked the button. As of now 6, 358, 001 female voters to 3, 277,446 males voted according to Facebook's map, with 31 percent of those who claimed to have voted between 25-34.
A recent study led by the University of California, San Diego found that around one third of a million more people showed up at the ballot box in the U.S. in 2010 because of a Facebook message on Election Day. Over 5.4 million people indicated on Facebook that they voted on Election Day 2008 and more than 12 million people clicked the button during the 2010 midterm election.
"Voter turnout is incredibly important to the democratic process. Without voters, there's no democracy," lead author James Fowler, UC San Diego professor of political science in the Division of Social Sciences and of medical genetics, said in a statement regarding the study.
"Our study suggests that social influence may be the best way to increase voter turnout. Just as importantly, we show that what happens online matters a lot for the 'real world.'"
Sasha Issenberg's recent book, "The Victory Lab," suggested a similar sentiment. Issenberg tells an especially relevant anecdote about Michigan political consultant Mark Grebner. In 2005, Grebner collaborated with two political scientists from Yale who were interested in finding new ways to motivate people to vote.
One experiment involved sending voters a copy of their recent voting record and those of their neighbors, along with a promise to repeat the disclosure (all based on publicly available information) after the election. That threat increased voter turnout by 20 percent.
Could Facebook be driving voter activity in a similar way with its "heat map?"