LIVE 2012 ELECTION COVERAGE

2:02AM ET: Obama’s victory speech was full of the 2008-style soaring rhetoric that he largely kept out of the 2012 campaign. The speech was much more 2008 Obama than 2012. And that ends the 2012 Presidential election. Thanks to everyone who followed along. We set record traffic numbers today. I’ll be posting an article with my 20 main takeaways from Obama’s win in a bit.

1:01AM ET: Romney’s speech was short but classy. Crowd response was also classy. A positive end to what has been a very negative campaign on both sides.

12:55AM ET: Romney is out to concede.

12:42AM ET: Virginia has been called for Obama. Obama has also taken the lead in the national popular vote. Romney is going to need to concede here. It’s getting a bit silly to wait so long after the election is obviously over.

12:10AM ET: Romney is going to need to concede soon. This is an electoral blowout, he has no justification for not conceding, and the longer he holds out, the worse he and the Republican party are going to look.

12:06AM ET: Rasmussen and ARG were the only two pollsters to show Romney winning Colorado in their final polls. Fail. Rasmussen and ARG were the only two pollsters to show Romney winning Iowa in their final polls. Another fail.

11:53PM ET: Nevada also called for Obama. Romney will have to concede now, as Obama is over 270 even without Ohio, Florida, and Virginia.

11:50PM ET: Colorado gets called for Obama. He no longer even needs Ohio to win.

11:40PM ET: Meanwhile, Karl Rove is embarrassing himself on live TV and losing it on FOX, trying to get them to uncall the election for Obama. This is going to make for a great SNL sketch. It’s over Karl, let it go. Time to move on.

11:36PM ET: As for governing, we now return to where we have been. Republicans control the House, Democrats control the Senate, and Obama is in the White House. Something has got to give with the gridlock. Republicans took the strategy of obstructing and letting the voters decide. With Obama winning, the voters have weighed in. Elections do have consequences. Whether the two parties will actually work together now remains to be seen, but we face some very serious issues, particularly the looming fiscal cliff, that will need to be addressed pretty much immediately.

11:34PM ET: Republicans paid a VERY steep price tonight for anti-Hispanic and anti-women rhetoric tonight. If they want to win a Presidential election again sometime in the future, they have some serious bridge building to do with those two groups.

11:27PM ET: Hopefully the many people who have questioned the polls all year learned something tonight about saying any facts that don’t show your guy winning are false (this includes the many racist trolls who have threatened me with violence for years for simply reporting the polls). Facts are facts. Data is data. The polls are almost always right for a reason. If you’re surprised by the results tonight, perhaps you should question the sources (FOX News, Rasmussen, etc.) that have painted a very questionable picture of this race not rooted in facts or reality for months.

11:23PM ET: Republican party now has to face a very hard reality — the country’s changing demographics have left them behind. We have 7.9% unemployment, if a Republican cannot beat the incumbent Democrat in this environment, when will they? The percentage of white voters is going to go down in 2016, not up. The percentage of Hispanic voters is going to go up in 2016, not down. The Tea Party far-right shift by the GOP, while it paid big dividends in local races in 2010, has resulted in a Republican party that cannot win national elections. Republicans have won the popular vote in a Presidential election ONE TIME in the last 20 years. Think about that for a second. The party is going to really have to examine how they broaden their message and become more inclusive. Given how divided the party is, it remains to be seen if the moderate wing of the party can actually wrestle control back from the far-right wing, or if they fail to learn any lessons from this election.

11:22PM ET: Nate Silver, Sam Wang, Votamatic, and the pollsters that used factual data have all been validated.

11:21PM ET: And let’s say it again, Rasmussen has gotten pretty much every state wrong. Hope some of you remember that in 2016.

11:20PM ET: What we are seeing in these results is a Romney campaign that was entirely bluffing for the past several weeks. They said the polls were all wrong. They said they were on their way to a clear victory. The Romney ground game, from all reports, was not very good. The Obama ground game looks like it was as strong, if not stronger, than it was in 2008. They turned out their voters in a massive way.

11:17PM ET: The polls were right, the math was right, Obama won. Funny how that works. And no, you can’t “unskew” the actual election results.

11:16PM ET: Obama has been re-elected, surpassing 270 electoral votes. He’s well on his way to 332, another electoral landslide.

11:15PM ET: FOX has called Ohio for Obama. It’s over.

11:13PM ET: Looks like Obama is going to win Iowa big. That vaunted Obama Iowa ground game still has it.

11:12PM ET: Iowa has been called for Obama. Obama has now won the swing states of Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. Romney has won the swing state of North Carolina.

11:09PM ET: Exit polling and the votes we have in so far, as well as the votes remaining, indicate that Obama is likely to win Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Iowa, Colorado, and Nevada and finish with 332 electoral votes.

11:07PM ET: GOP strategist Alex Castellanos sums it up: “it is what it is folks. romney is not performing all across swing states at levels he needs. this is not about romney. much bigger.”

11:05PM ET: CNN just reported that the Romney campaign is no longer responding to emails or phone calls from the media.

11:03PM ET: FOX calls North Carolina for Romney. Rasmussen again the biggest loser, having projected an easy Romney win by 6%.

11:00PM ET: It looks like Romney is going to pull out North Carolina.

10:58PM ET: Obama up by 9% in Pennsylvania now, so the state didn’t end up particularly close.

10:45PM ET: John King on CNN also just did the county breakdown of Florida and it is looking like Obama is going to pull out Florida. Pretty big for Obama if it holds as it almost ensures he will top 300 electoral votes.

10:40PM ET: Chuck Todd just said on NBC that the remaining counties in Florida are blue counties, meaning Obama is likely going to squeak out a win in Florida. May be another hour or two before we know for sure though.

10:27PM ET: With Iowa, Nevada, and Colorado looking good for Obama right now, he will be over 270 with just those, even without Ohio, Virginia, Florida, and North Carolina. That’s what winning New Hampshire got him, he can top 270 now without any of those big swing states.

10:20PM ET: As big an idiot as Dick Morris is, and he is totally deserving of the ridicule he gets, it’s more telling that someone as respected as George Will got it just as wrong as Morris. It’s amazing how much these pundits simply ignored the wealth of public polling and instead just decided to make wild predictions based on their gut with no evidence to back it up. Will has done serious damage to his reputation in this cycle.

10:16PM ET: Todd Akin also loses. Maybe future GOP candidates will learn from this — don’t talk about rape, nothing good will come of it.

10:14PM ET: Sarah Palin on FOX News — “I’m disappointed.”

10:10PM ET: FOX News has already started to dissect what has gone wrong, with Brit Hume coming to the conclusion that there are a lot more center-left people in America than he thought.

10:03PM ET: CNN’s exit polls show Obama on track to win Iowa and Nevada by 6% each.

10:00PM ET: New Mexico called for Obama. Amazing that in 2004, George W. Bush WON New Mexico. Now it’s not even a swing state. Yet another reminder of how fast country’s changing demographics are leaving the Republican party behind.

9:56PM ET: Minnesota gets called for Obama. So Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, the three final states that the Romney campaign was claiming to have put in play over the last few days, all go to Obama. It was one giant bluff.

9:53PM ET: So far, Obama’s ground game is delivering again while Romney’s is coming up short. Romney is underperforming polls in Florida and North Carolina, Obama is overperforming. Romney underperformed polls in Wisconsin, Obama overperformed. That’s the difference in ground games.

9:47PM ET: Richard Mourdock loses his Senate race. A huge hit to the pro-rape wing of the GOP. Democrats on their way to holding the Senate.

9:42PM ET: Let’s add Susquehanna to the hack pollsters list. Their final Pennsylvania poll showed a tie. Obama won. So far, Rasmussen, ARG, and Susquehanna have had polls fail to predict the right winner.

9:39PM ET: New Hampshire has been called for Obama. Things looking grim for Romney. ARG the latest pollster to continue a tradition of crappyness — their final NH poll showed a tie.

9:34 PM ET: Nate Silver, Sam Wang, and all the polls except Rasmussen, Gravis, and the GOP-leaning polls being validated so far. Just to put things in perspective, Rasmussen’s final Wisconsin poll showed a TIE. It looks like Obama is on his way to a 5%-6% victory in Wisconsin.

9:26PM ET: FOX News has called Wisconsin for Obama. With Pennsylvania and Wisconsin now off the table for Romney, he is running out of options. And the Paul Ryan pick can now be called a total failure. He literally added nothing to the ticket.

9:18PM ET: NBC & FOX News just called Pennsylvania for Obama. Romney’s hail mary attempt fails. No surprise. Except maybe to Dick Morris.

9:09 PM ET: Still nothing of consequence has happened so far. Hopefully some of these networks get some balls and start calling states that matter soon.

9:08PM ET: CNN exit poll has Obama winning Wisconsin by 6%. Would really raise the question of what Romney accomplished by picking Paul Ryan, but that’s an issue to discuss after tonight.

9:01PM ET: Michigan gets called instantly for Obama. So much for that.

8:54PM ET: Dick Morris just tweeted that he is “worried.”

8:48PM ET: Florida and North Carolina remain exceptionally close. That does not bode well for Romney nationally as we move to the midwest and west. A national electorate where the Republican doesn’t win FL and NC fairly comfortably is going to have a hard time winning states like Wisconsin, Iowa, etc.

8:46PM ET: We still have not seen any signs anywhere that the public polls are off.

8:39PM ET: Florida exit polls show Obama winning among Jewish voters by 40%. All the Israel bluster from Romney doesn’t seem to have made a dent among Jewish voters.

8:36PM ET: And Linda McMahon loses. Again. Sorry, Vince.

8:34PM ET: Looks like Romney is doing pretty well in some other Virginia swing counties. State looks like it’ll take awhile to settle. Ohio may be decided before Virginia.

8:26PM ET: The country results in some key swing states don’t look particularly good for Romney compared to 2008. He seems to just be matching McCain in a lot of key counties where he needed to outperform McCain dramatically. One example from 538:

Just more than three-quarters of the vote has been reported in Chesterfield County, Va., an important suburban and exurban region southwest of Richmond. In the tally so far, Mitt Romney leads President Obama 54 percent to 45 percent. If those percentages hold, Mr. Romney’s performance there would match almost exactly Senator John McCain’s margin of victory in Chesterfield County in 2008: 53 percent to 46 percent. Former President George W. Bush, however, when he carried the state in 2004, won Chesterfield County with 63 percent of the vote.

8:25PM ET: If body language means anything, the FOX News crew is projecting a Romney loss. O’Reilly just had a mini-meltdown, blaming Chris Christie, Hurricane Sandy, and “non-whites” for this.

8:08PM ET: White vote in Ohio was 83% in 2008, 79% this year based on exit polls. If Romney loses tonight, GOP is going to wake up to some very cold, hard demographic realities.

8:03PM ET: CNN exit polls have Obama winning Florida 50% to 49%, NH 50% to 48%, and PA 52% to 47%.

7:52PM ET: Obama has opened up a 100,000+ vote lead in Florida with 35% in, but a lot of votes from the panhandle are not in yet. That area is very Republican.

7:35PM ET: CNN says their exit polls have Obama winning Ohio by 3% (51% to 48%) and North Carolina tied at 49%. North Carolina being tied is a very bad sign for Republicans.

7:29PM ET: CNN just reported the party ID breakdown of Ohio: 39% Democrats, 30% Republicans, and 31% Independents. This was the single biggest point of contention over the polls. Republicans were “unskewing polls” claiming the turnout would be even between Republicans and Democrats and not like the +8% Democrats got in 2008. Well, the polls were right. Democrats improved their percentage this year.

7:21PM ET: The usual warning on exit polls, they could be off. Nobody has won this thing yet. But so far, things are lining up with the polls we’ve been following here daily.

7:00PM ET: Vermont goes to Obama. Kentucky to Romney. No surprises. Georgia, South Carolina, and Indiana don’t get called. Very surprising. Virginia, obviously, is not called. Virginia showing as a 49%-49% tie so far. Wolf Blitzer sounded orgasmic when showing the tie.

6:45PM ET: CNN’s Peter Hamby reports that the Romney camp’s final internal poll for Ohio has Obama up 5%. This night is not going well at all for Romney so far.

6:42PM ET: CNN’s top GOP analyst, Alex Castellanos, just looked like he saw a ghost when asked to comment on the exit polling data. His response was basically that the exit polling data must be wrong.

6:36PM ET: Youth vote showing up at 18% in exit polls so far. Romney camp was hoping it would fall, but 18% is the same as 2008. One positive data point for Romney from the exit polling, he is doing well on the Medicare question. The Paul Ryan pick did not hurt him on Medicare like most thought it would.

6:21PM ET: CNN says 73% of voters today are white, 13% black, 10% latino. This, again, is a very favorable electorate for Obama. 13% matches the black turnout in 2008, 10% latino is up from 2008, and 73% white is down from 2008. Romney camp has been hoping white turnout would hit 74% or 75% and black turnout would drop to around 11%. Not happening so far. Again, all the polling data from the past few days is looking accurate so far.

6:13PM ET: Ok, so the first wave of exit poll data from the major networks has been very good for Obama. They all are in line with the better results Obama was getting in polls, particularly on issues related to the economy, whether the country is on the right track, whether Obamacare should be repealed, etc. Again, this is the first wave of exit polling and could be off, but so far, the electorate looks favorable to Obama.

6:07PM ET: Mormonism has not been an issue in this election, but if that Evangelical Christian number out of Virginia is right, raises the question of if it is having an impact. Still though, remember, these are early exit polls and could be off.

6:03PM ET: First exit poll data point that could mean something: 21% of voters in Virginia say they are evangelical Christians, down from 28% in 2008. If that’s true, very bad sign for Romney.

6:02PM ET: 15% say Obama’s handling of Hurricane Sandy was the most important factor in their vote. A sign that it had an impact on the small group of undecideds.

5:58PM ET: So far, exit polling data very much lines up with the polls. One has Obama up 51% to 45% on the question of who will handle Medicare better, Romney up 50% to 46% on who will handle the deficit better. From the limited data we have so far, no surprises.

5:39PM ET: Some early exit polling #s: 39% say economy improving, 31% say getting worse. 50% blame Bush for economy.

5:30PM ET: Little to report so far. There are some reports of big turnout in Virginia and in Ohio, particularly around Cleveland. This would seem to be good news for the Obama campaign, but it’s too early to make any grand assumptions. Long night ahead of us.

5:30PM ET: I’ll be posting updates here throughout the night and on Twitter. Be sure to follow along.