Not much of a diary, but I wanted to announce that North Carolina is [not yet quite] officially BLUE.
It was a long night. First we easily felled Dole with her odious Godless ads. YES! Then we re-claimed the governor's mansion. YES! Then Larry Kissell (who lost by 329 votes last time) kicks Robin Hayes out of Congress in his second go-around. YES! (Diary on Larry's win here.)
Now, after all the votes have been counted, it came down to a measly 13505 11246 vote difference out of almost 4.2 millions votes cast. North Carolina follows Virginia and joins the chorus of states longing for change. North Carolina is officially Tarheel blue. Results via WRAL.
I give a big thank you kiss to the fine residents of this state. Wmmmmuuuah!
Updates under the fold - but me and the wife are calling it... .BLUE!
UPDATE: WRAL (what I was following) is showing 100% of precincts reporting, however the national networks are claiming 99% and still haven't called NC.
Discussion in this diary is pretty sure this is due to the needing to count the provisional ballots, and speculation is that Obama will carry these.
So, still no official call on NC - or Indiana, which is in the exact same boat.
UPDATE 2: NC Board of Elections claims 100 of 100 counties are reporting BARACK OBAMA the winner of NORTH CAROLINA by 11246 votes!
A win is a win, even one by 0.27%! It is still unfortunately slated as "unofficial" on the BoE webpage, but the vote totals are bigger than what the 99% reporting numbers are on the networks' sites.
UPDATE 3: Another NC related diary appeared a whopping 33 seconds after mine.
UPDATE 4: Indiana just called for Obama. Come on, call North Cacklacky already!
UPDATE 5: Yet another diary on the subject. Commenter surmises the closeness is triggering a recount.
UPDATE 6: A-ha! BoE vote detail webpage shows absentee & one stop (early) votes are included, but that no (well, a whopping 7) provisional ballots are in the current totals. That there is the hold up. I'm guessing election employees are having a long night of validating and counting provisional ballots by hand. NC likely won't be official until tomorrow.
UPDATE 7: WXII (Winston-Salem) calls it for Obama on the unofficial totals. No mention of the lack of provisional ballots in those numbers. This is the first news org that's called it. Seems a little early since the Board of Elections themselves aren't doing so.
UPDATE 8: For those that aren't in NC, it was rainy both here and in VA all day. This caused wet ballot issues in places where people had to stand in the rain before voting, as wet ballots were jamming the optical readers in places. They eventually fixed these issues, but it had to result in some add'l provisional ballots. Regardless, there has to be more than 7 provisional ballots that were deemed accepted in the entire state!
UPDATE 9: Mark Halparin (of Time's The Page) has called North Carolina for Obama. Yippee skippy but he's wrong, as no national news outlet has actually called it yet (CNN, MSNBC, Faux).
UPDATE 10: Yay, front page mention!
UPDATE 11: Wed 10AM - BoE results are unchanged from last night (still only 7 provisional ballots shown in unofficial results). Commenter noted that another local paper (Charlotte Observer) called it for Obama in the wee hours this morning, however, an AP article in the News & Observer (Raleigh newspaper) today confirms my suspicions from last night: it's down to the provisional ballots, and no one knows yet how many there are.
The official outcome in North Carolina will depend the counting of provisional ballots, cast by voters whose eligibility to vote must be confirmed. That's a process that could take several days. It wasn't immediately known how many provisional ballots are outstanding.
...
The State Board of Elections reported a 68.4 percent voter turnout unofficially, which doesn't include provisional ballots that numbered nearly 50,000 in the election between President Bush and Democrat John Kerry four years ago. The turnout is close to the 69 percent reported in the 1984 race between President Reagan and Walter Mondale, the highest since 1972.
Another commenter notes provisional ballots aren't counted until November 14. (Still need to confirm this.)
The AP article goes on to speculate why NC turned so blue this year:
Although Bush won North Carolina by 12 percentage points four years ago - a year when former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards was on the ticket as the Democratic vice presidential nominee - the politics of the state are moderating.
Retirees from northern states are moving to communities along the Atlantic coast and in the western Blue Ridge mountains. Young professionals - many educated at one of the state's nationally ranked universities - are settling from Charlotte to Raleigh in cities along Interstate 85.
I also add that the influx of highly educated types, mostly from the Northeast, into tech, bio-tech and medical jobs in the Research Triangle is what has slowly turned the Triangle so blue, plus the banking/financial industry in Charlotte (Bank of America HQ).
UPDATE 12: Wed 12:30PM - Durham-based Center for Southern Studies gives a good break down this morning on the history of provisional ballots in NC and how, while the number of provisional ballots is expected to be well lower due to the one-stop early voting, they historically lean Dem. Looks like roughly 60% of provisional ballots were accepted in last election - so it looks like there is little chance that over 50k votes remain. Looks more and more difficult for McCain to make up the 11k current lead.
UPDATE 13: Wed 12:45PM - I finally took matters into my own hands and called up the NC State Board of Elections for their take. I spoke with Veronica Degraffenreid (Elections Liaison).
Counties are doing their own provisional ballot verifications and approval/rejections, so the state has no idea of the number of provisional ballots out there nor percentage accepted. Individual counties are starting to report back today and tomorrow, but by law counties have until 11/14 or shortly thereafter to turn in their official counts. The election results will continue to be marked "unofficial" until the state canvass is conducted 11/25.
So, bottom line is that North Carolina is likely to remain the sole Undecided state in the Presidential Race until sometime between tomorrow and the 14th.
UPDATE 14: Wed 1:15PM - WRAL article quotes the State Elections Director:
State Board of Elections director Gary Bartlett estimated Wednesday there are about 40,000 provisional ballots, cast by voters whose eligibility to vote must be confirmed.
He said history suggests that about 65 percent of those ballots will be eligible and they are likely to break toward the winner in numbers similar to that of Election Day.
That leaves roughly 26000 votes to potentially be counted. McCain would need around over 70% of these approved provisional ballots to overtake Obama's 11-12k lead. More evidence that NORTH CAROLINA = BLUE.
UPDATE 15: PPP Polling breaks down how Obama won NC.