Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will be spending a lot of time in Ohio the next four days.
Both sides are spinning new jobs numbers -- 171,000 jobs were added nationwide last month, beating expectations. Still the unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9 percent as more Americans rejoined the job search.
It probably won't sway who wins California's 55 electoral votes. New numbers show why we aren't considered a swing state. In California, 18.2 million are registered to vote, up nearly 1 million voters from 2008. The secretary of state says the new online registration system is responsible for the increase.
About 44 percent of voters in the state are registered Democrats, while just 29 percent are Republicans. The biggest party growth is no party, nearly equaling the number of republicans.
Another change to California's voting landscape is how we vote. In 2008, 42 percent voted by mail. This year, the state sent out 20 percent more mail-in ballots. The problem is those ballots can take longer to count.
Counties take time to interpret voter intent for each ballot and must verify that signature on the envelope matches the signature on the voter registration card.
Then, there are those who drop off their mail-in ballots to the polling place within a few days of Election Day.
"Those ballots don't even get to the county registrar's office until after the polls close so they won't get processed until that night or perhaps the following day or day after," said California Secretary of State Debra Bowen.
So although the presidential race here may be called fairly early Tuesday night, it could be several days -- if not weeks -- before we know the result of close proposition races.
