President Obama will finish his re-election campaign at McCormick Place in Chicago (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
1:01 a.m.: Barack Obama, the 44th president, has been re-elected. With only Florida’s 31 electoral votes still unaccounted for, Obama leads with 303 to Mitt Romney’s 206. Romney just delivered his concession speech from his campaign headquarters in Boston. Obama is about to give his victory address in Chicago. And we’re going to bed. Good night.
11:04 p.m.: West Coast polls are closing. Obama wins California, Washington and Hawaii. Romney wins Idaho, the Associated Press reports. Electoral vote count now stands at Obama 238, Romney 191.
10:56 p.m. The Associated Press projects Mitt Romney will win North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes. The margin is razor-thin, with Romney sitting at 2,246,026 votes to President Obama’s 2,154,562, with 89 of 100 counties reporting, according to the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
The AP also called Minnesota’s 10 electoral votes for Obama, and Arizona’s 11 for Romney.
10:34 p.m.: In case you’re worried about your grandparents, Florida is still too close for any major news organization to call. However, Gothamist can definitively state that no matter what happens tonight, Florida will not only remain America’s wang, it will also remain America’s derpiest state:
10:24 p.m. Voters in Wisconsin have elected the first openly gay member of the United States Senate. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, defeated former Gov. Tommy Thompson. Thompson also served as President George W. Bush’s first health and human services secretary.
“Tammy Baldwin has always been a trailblazer, but with her victory tonight Senator-elect Baldwin has again earned her spot in the history books,” Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a news release.
10:15 p.m.: Senate candidates who said memorably stupid things about women are now 0-2. CNN projects that in Missouri, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill has won another term over Rep. Todd Akin, who said in September that he believes that women do not become pregnant from “legitimate rape.” Earlier this evening, Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock lost his Senate race to Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly.
10:05 p.m. Romney wins Utah, surprise surprise. But in New Hampshire, where Romney owns a lake house, Obama picked up four electoral votes. It’s 160-148, Romney.
10 p.m.: Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School professor who rose to prominence as a consumers’ advocate in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial collapse, will be the next U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, CNN reports. Warren, who was instrumental in the architecture of the 2009 financial regulation law and the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, was blocked by Senate Republicans from leading the new bureau. Instead, she waged a campaign against Republican Sen. Scott Brown, who in 2010 won a special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Democrats have now gained two seats in the Senate.
9:50 p.m.: At least one Republican Senate candidate appears to have lost his bid after saying stupid things about women. Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who said last month that he believes pregnancies caused by rape are “something that God intended to happen,” lost to Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly, The New York Times projects. Donnelly’s victory adds one seat to the Senate Democratic caucus following Mourdock’s primary defeat of Sen. Richard Lugar.
9:43 p.m.: President Obama will win Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes, CNN projects. Obama carried Pennsylvania by 11 percentage points in 2008, but in the last week of this year’s campaign, Mitt Romney made a play for the Keystone State, including a rally there today.
9:30 p.m.: Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania both won second terms, the Associated Press reports. But CNN reports that House Republicans have won enough seats to maintain control of the House of Representatives. John Boehner of Ohio will remain Speaker.
9 p.m.: It’s 9 p.m. Do you know where your votes are? If you’re Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Hampshire, Ohio or Florida, keep waiting. But CNN is calling Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming and Texas for Mitt Romney. President Obama gets New York, New Jersey and Michigan.
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy’s devastating toll on his state, Gov. Chris Christie, a prominent Romney surrogate, offered unabashed praise for the Obama Administration’s response to the storm, leading some to see a wedge in the Republican camp. Christie also allowed his displace constituents to vote by fax or email.
At one time, Romney had hoped to make a fight of it in Michigan, where he was raised while his father, George Romney, served as governor.
Romney now has 152 electoral votes; Obama has 152.
8:49 p.m.: Romney wins Alabama, the AP projects. Duh. Mississippi too.
8:35: p.m.: For the second consecutive election, Connecticut will not be sending a representative of World Wrestling Entertainment to the United States Senate. In the race to replace the retiring, droopy-jowled Sen. Joe Lieberman, Democratic Rep. Chris Murphy power-slammed WWE executive Linda McMahon. The Hartford Courant projects Murphy taking more than 60 percent of the vote.
8:27 p.m.: Romney wins Tennessee’s 11 electoral votes and Georgia’s 15 votes, putting him ahead 66-65.
8:25 p.m. Early Senate projections show Democrats holding on to seats they were expected to—Delaware, Rhode Island, Maryland and Florida. Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican, keeps his seat in Tennessee. The newest member of the Senate is former Maine Gov. Angus King, an independent who has not yet indicated which party he will caucus with.
8:04 p.m.: With many states closing their polls at 8 p.m., President Obama wins D.C. Illinois, Connecticut, Maine, Delaware, Rhode Island, Maryland and Massachusetts, the Associated Press reports. Mitt Romney wins Oklahoma. Obama now leads, 65 electoral votes to Romney’s 40. Pennsylvania is too close to call.
7:56 p.m.: The Associated Press has called Indiana and South Carolina for Romney, who now has 33 electoral votes in the bag to Obama’s three from Vermont.
7:32 p.m.: Romney wins West Virginia’s four electoral votes, no surprises there. North Carolina and Ohio also closed at 7:30 p.m., both states are considered too close to call, especially Ohio. Seriously, Ohio has never gotten so much attention.
Virginia also won’t be determined for a while. The Obama campaign says the voter turnout it created today was higher than originally expected. Some 30,000 volunteers were expected to canvass Virginia today on behalf of the president’s re-election campaign, and the entire state—and the D.C. television market—was inundated this year be a seemingly nonstop barrage of advertisements by Obama, Romney and third-party groups. The vote totals might not be finished, but the advertisements are.
Welcome to the Gothamist network’s election night live blog. We could be up a while, so just roll with it.
At 7 p.m., polls are closing in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia. The Associated Press has called Kentucky for Mitt Romney and Vermont for President Obama, giving the former Massachusetts governor eight electoral votes to Obama’s 3.
Romney spent the day campaigning in Pennsylvania in Ohio. Obama was in Chicago, visiting a campaign office and playing basketball.
In Vermont, Sen. Bernie Sanders was elected to a second term.
Per a White House pool report, Obama is spending this evening eating dinner with his extended family at his home on the South Side of Chicago.
