ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — President Barack Obama was declared the winner of Florida’s 29 electoral votes Saturday, ending a four-day count with a razor-thin margin that narrowly avoided an automatic recount.
Obama had already clinched re-election, but Florida’s 29 electoral votes gave him 332 to Republican challenger Mitt Romney’s 206. A total of 270 electoral votes was needed to win the White House.
The Florida secretary of state’s office said that with almost 100 percent of the vote counted, Obama led Romney with 50 percent, or 4,236,032 votes, to 49.1 percent, or 4,162,174 votes. The difference of almost 74,000 votes was more than the 0.5 percent margin where a computer recount would have been ordered.
There is a Nov. 16 deadline for overseas and military ballots, but under Florida law, recounts are based on Saturday’s results. Only a handful of overseas and military ballots are believed to remain outstanding.
It’s normal for election supervisors in Florida and other states to spend days after any election counting absentee, provisional, military and overseas ballots. Usually, though, the election has already been called on election night or soon after because the winner’s margin is beyond reach.
“Florida has spoken loudly in support of moving our nation forward,” Ashley Walker, the Obama campaign’s director for Florida, said in a news release. She added that the win was a testament to the campaign’s volunteers and staff members.
When reached by phone Saturday, Romney’s communications director Gail Gitcho said the campaign had no comment.
Obama’s win was partially attributed to heavy support from black, Hispanic and younger voters. Exit polls conducted for The Associated Press showed Obama was favored by more than 9 of 10 black voters and 3 of 5 Hispanic voters in Florida. The president also was the choice of two-thirds of voters under age 30.
Romney led among white and older voters.
On election night, it was difficult for officials to call the presidential race in Florida, because the margin was so close and the voting stretched late into the evening.
In Miami-Dade, for instance, so many people were in line in certain precincts when polls closed at 7 p.m. that voting wasn’t finished until after midnight. Voters in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers and Orlando areas waited in line for nearly two hours after polls closed, said Ken Detzner, Florida’s secretary of state.
The hours-long wait at the polls in some areas, a lengthy ballot and the fact that Gov. Rick Scott refused to extend early voting hours has led some to criticize Florida’s voting process. Some officials have vowed to investigate why there were problems at the polls and how that led to a drawn-out vote count.
“The No. 1 issue that we need to resolve is more locations for early voting,” Detzner said.
Florida Democratic Party Chairman Rod Smith blamed long lines on a law signed by Scott, a Republican, cutting from 14 to 8 the number of days early voting polls could open this year.
Scott defended the law. Nearly 4.8 million Floridians cast absentee ballots or went to early polling locations, up from 4.5 million four years ago, according to the Florida Department of State.
A record number of Florida voters — 8.4 million, or 70 percent of those registered— cast ballots.
Long lines also delayed counting in Virginia and other states and raised questions about the efficiency of voting in the country. Obama cited the waits that voters faced in his victory speech in Chicago.
“I want to thank every American who participated in this election, whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time,” Obama said. “By the way, we have to fix that.”
If there had been a recount in Florida, it would have been different from the state’s lengthy one between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore in 2000. The state no longer uses punch-card ballots, which became known for their hanging chads. All 67 counties now use optical scan ballots where voters mark their selections manually.
Saturday’s announcement gave Obama victories in eight of the nine swing states, losing only North Carolina. In addition to Florida, he won Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada.
Information for this article was contributed by Tamara Lush of The Associated Press; by Michael Bender of Bloomberg News; and by Lizette Alvarez of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/11/2012