Election Day voters in most western Wake towns favored Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

It was fairly tight in Cary, where Romney won 50 percent of the vote and President Barack Obama won 47 percent.. Further south, it turned into a blowout, with Romney taking 54 percent of the Apex vote and nearly 60 percent of the vote in Holly Springs and Fuquay-Varina.

However, the story could change when the Wake County Board of Elections releases detailed early-ballot information. Early voting in Wake County heavily favored Obama.

In fact, the Democratic tendency to vote early confounded The New York Times as it reported on this area. Nate Silver, the newspaper’s superstar statistician, mistook the Election Day numbers for a red shift in Wake.

“Almost all of Mr. Romney’s advantage can be explained by one county, Wake County, in North Carolina’s Research Triangle,” Silver wrote at 9:59 p.m. on election night.

It looked as if Raleigh and its suburbs were returning to 2004, when the county narrowly split for President George W. Bush.

“Thanks a lot, friggin’ Wake,” tweeted Cary resident Wayne Clark.

Yet, for once, Silver’s predictions were off, and for good reason: He hadn’t accounted for the fact that the Wake County Board of Elections still hadn’t posted early-voting results hours after the polls closed.

When the county finally posted the numbers, the extra 260,000 votes pushed Wake County to a decisive win for Obama, nipping theories that the area could become a swing county in a swing state.

However, the verdict’s still out on whether Cary or Apex might have been swing towns this season. Some Election Day interviews revealed that local voters freely picked positions and candidates from the opposing parties.

“I see a lot of people that are northern Republicans, which down here might be a moderate Democrat,” said Cary Mayor Harold Weinbrecht. “They can go to either side.”

For some voters, like Cary resident Gary Rosia, partisan lines become much more porous at local levels. Rosia voted Republican on the top of the ticket, Libertarian for governor, and “yes” on Cary’s bond spending.

While he supports Republicans’ federal approach to taxes, he believes that tax-funded spending and debt are more workable at local and regional scales.

“I don’t mind paying a little more taxes at the local level, if it’s going to be something more visible,” said Rosia, 45. “At a smaller level the Democratic approach works better, I think.”

Kevin MacKay, 38, a Cary resident, went for a Democratic governor and a Republican president while generally opposing Cary’s bond spending.

“My ticket’s all messed up,” he said.