Obama pulls ahead

By STANDARD REPORTER and AGENCIES

Even though White House race looked certain to end in a dead heat this morning given it was too close to call, reputable pollsters put their money on incumbent Barack Obama.

Barring unforeseen surprises, a joyous wave is expected to reverberate across Kenya as the man whose father was born and buried on her soil is declared second-time winner in the US presidential race.

For ordinary Kenyans like the crowd that watched with a tinge of amusement and admiration as residents of Nyangoma Kogelo Village, where Barack’s father Hussein Obama was born, it matters not that he may scrape through on the strength of the electoral college vote but not the popular vote, which could see him rule as a lame duck President.

All they wanted was victory, and the rest were details that fog the mind, and so they conducted a mock election where from early morning they declared the man they fondly refer to as ‘our son’ had taken an early lead.

After doing so, with Republican Party’s candidate Mitt Romney’s ballot box literally empty, they sat back to wait for what they believe would be pleasant news today at 5am.

On Tuesday, as America went to vote the two candidates were neck-and-neck, though the first black American President was set to clinch the victory. 

The snapshot of where the presidential race stood last night was based on samples of several statewide national and opinion polls that filtered through from experts with majority of polls showing Obama hugging a slim lead over Romney.

The BBC poll tracker closely monitored the changing support for Democratic incumbent Obama and his rival Romney.

By press time, all indications were that the outcomes lay with decisive vote in the battlegrounds. In these states the race was close enough that either candidate could win. These are the states where the crucial election was to be decided.

The battleground states with 151 votes in the electoral college include Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

A candidate needs 270 of the 538 votes from the Electoral College to become president. The Huffington Post put Obama in a commanding 277 votes against Romney’s 191.

The BBC poll of polls reported Obama at 50 per cent and Romney at 47 per cent of the national vote. CNN showed the candidates tied at 49-49 while ABC News had Obama ahead at 50 to 47. The Gallup poll showed Romney in the lead with 50 against Obama’s 49.

Pew Research’s latest poll showed Obama at 50 and Romney at 47 per cent of the votes.

In the US polls, there is a provision in which even the astronauts in space receive a digital version of their ballot that they fill out and send back their votes to Earth.

There are currently two Americans aboard the International Space Station, and both voted via absentee ballot, while they were still on Earth.

As voting came to a close and tallying, only time would tell whether President Obama would be elected to serve another four years in the White House or he would fall short in his campaign against Republican challenger Romney.

The BBC ‘Poll Of Polls’ uses the same methodology as the London School of Economics, known as the Median Smoothing Method.

Looking at the five most recent polls it takes the middle value for each candidate, like the value that falls between two figures that are higher and two figures that are lower.

Most states have a history of voting for a particular party and the presidential candidates will count on their votes again. This leaves only a handful of states where the election will be decided. These are the election battlegrounds.

Presidential elections are run using an Electoral College. Each state is given a number of votes based on its population. This means some states are worth much more than others.

For example, California (population 37.7 million) has 55 votes, while a more rural state like Montana (population one million) has only three votes. The presidential candidate who wins in a state wins all that state’s college votes.

President Obama seeks a second term amid national polls showing him virtually tied with Republican challenger Romney.

But Mr Obama has one big thing going for him: voters seem to like him personally, and many remain loyal to him even while frustrated by the nation’s lingering hangover from the recession.

If his campaign team can entice the bulk of his 2008 supporters back to the poll booths, while also persuading undecided voters that Mr Romney does not have their interests at heart, Mr Obama will undoubtedly win a second term.

Obama took office amid one of the worst recessions in decades. And as the nation went to the polls, the US unemployment rate was hovering stubbornly just below 8 per cent.

Add to that, the Democratic Party suffered historic losses in the mid-term polls in November 2010, with the Republicans emerging energised and more determined than ever to promote their conservative agenda and stymie the president’s plans.

Romney and the Republicans hoped that Mr Obama would be unable to inspire the same enthusiasm that carried him to the White House and that independent voters will dump him amid a still-lagging economy.

Obama made history on  November 4, 2008, when he easily defeated Republican rival John McCain to become the first black president of the United States.

Aged 47 when he was inaugurated, Mr Obama was also the first urban president since Harry Truman and the first president born in Hawaii.

And unlike John McCain, George Bush and Bill Clinton, his background was not steeped in the Vietnam War or the cultural conflicts of the 1960s.

During his challenging first term in office, Mr Obama and his fellow Democrats scored several historic achievements.

They overcame stiff Republican opposition to pass an economic stimulus programme, overhauled the US healthcare system, laid down new rules for Wall Street and the banking industry, and rescued the US auto industry from collapse.

Later, he and the Democrats overturned a two-decade-old law banning openly gay Americans from serving in the US military.

Wielding his presidential authority, Mr Obama also acted without the consent of Congress to grant temporary legal status to some young illegal immigrants brought to the US as children.

But even in the event of an Obama win, analysts said; Never before in American history has a sitting president won a second term without winning the popular vote. This year, it is within the realm of possibility.

A very tight race seems to favour Obama in the most competitive states that will decide the winner, even if growing Republican enthusiasm means more voters overall prefer Romney.

If that happens, Obama would face mounting problems – stubbornly high unemployment, Mideast unrest, the “fiscal cliff” of tax increases and spending cuts in January – with little ability to claim Americans support his way forward, political analysts forecast.

“If there is any room in these results for Republicans to say the public doesn’t support what he (Obama) is doing, it would make an already toxic, incredibly difficult situation that much worse,” Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer said.

Call it Al Gore’s revenge. Who could forget the grating 2000 election, when the vice president was denied a turn in the Oval Office despite winning more votes than President George W. Bush? Even after the Supreme Court settled the race, allegations of a “bloodless coup” deprived Bush of the clear mandate needed to unite a divided nation, until the September 11, 2001 attacks united Americans against a terrorist threat.