Two weeks ago, Barack Obama was triumphantly re-elected as US president. The strange thing is that the votes are still being counted 14 days later.

We know Obama won. We just don’t know by how much – thanks to the glacial vote counting.

If you haven’t been paying attention – and why should you? – what appeared to be a razor-thin victory for Obama on the night of 6 November has slowly stretched into a clear margin of more than four million votes and a three percentage-point lead over Mitt Romney. And talk of turnout being way down was also off the mark: with some results still being tallied, it appears 2012 was just a few points below that of 2008. About a third of states recorded more votes this year than in 2008.

As several slow-counting big states and cities – most notably in New York and California – continue to report new vote totals, it’s increasingly clear that the 2012 election wasn’t that close after all.

As those Democratic-leaning states come in, Obama’s share of the vote has inexorably climbed to 50.75%, while Romney’s share continues to slowly deflate, and is now down to 47.56% by one credible estimate complied by the excellent Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report.