Thursday, November 20, 2008

Sen. John McCain has returned to Senate business and President-elect Barack Obama has begun to piece together his Cabinet, but it was only yesterday that the results from one key state became final.

McCain won Missouri and its 11 votes in the electoral college by a fraction of a percentage point, for a final total of 173 electoral votes to Obama's 365. McCain won the state with 1,445,812 votes (49.4 percent) to Obama's 1,442,180 (49.3 percent), a margin of 3,632.

All told, third-party candidates in the state won 1.3 percent of the vote, according to records posted by the Secretary of State's Office. The independent ticket of Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez led among third-party voters, with 0.6 percent. "At this point, every vote has been counted," said Laura Egerdal, communications director for the secretary of state. "All the provisional ballots have been counted."

The state is required to certify the results as official by Dec. 9.

This is the first time since 1956 that Missouri has not voted for the winning candidate in a presidential election.

-- Garance Franke-Ruta