Supporters of Proposition 19, the marijuana legalization initiative, tried to blunt the measure’s failure Wednesday by calling it a moral victory that will spark an eventual success either in the Legislature or at the polls in 2012.

In fact, you’d have been hard-pressed to find a happier bunch of losers on the morning after Election Day. With some provisional and mail-in votes yet to be counted, Prop. 19 had racked up 3,392,438 votes, or 46 percent of those cast — not enough to win, but still more votes than Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman got even after $161.5 million in campaign spending.

“We plan to continue this discussion,” Yes on 19 spokeswoman Dale Jones said at a news conference in the campaign’s downtown Oakland headquarters. That means reaching out to those who favor legalization in general but could not get behind this particular measure, and to opponents that she said were “misinformed.”

“There’s a seat at the table for 2012,” she promised them. “This is not a matter of if, but when, and our leaders are already working on how to move this issue forward.”

Prop. 19 co-proponent Richard Lee, the Oaksterdam University founder and president, said his $1.4 million investment in the measure bought “$100 million worth of free press or advertising” that will color future debate on the issue. “We knew this was just one battle in a big war.”

“We are not discouraged, we are certainly not defeated — in fact, we are emboldened,” said Stephen Gutwillig, Drug Policy Action’s California director. “Prop. 19 has permanently changed American politics. “… Serious people take this issue seriously now.”

In Alameda County, 55.5 percent of voters favored Prop. 19; in Contra Costa County, 48.8 percent of voters were in favor.

Opponents trumped supporters in Los Angeles County by about 92,300, a big chunk of the 560,000-vote deficit statewide; co-proponent Jeff Jones said that county’s mismanagement of the medical marijuana industry, which led to an explosive proliferation of storefront dispensaries, hurt Prop. 19 in the traditionally liberal stronghold. Prop. 19 also failed in the “emerald triangle” of Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties, where the illicit marijuana cultivation industry might not have been in a rush to support regulation and taxation.

The supporters also said some voters were scared away from Prop. 19 by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s October announcement that authorities would “vigorously enforce” federal law against anyone who possesses, grows or sells marijuana for recreational use, no matter what California law says.

However, Tim Rosales, campaign manager for No on Prop. 19, issued a statement late Tuesday saying that voters saw the devil in the measure’s details.

“Proponents said Prop. 19 would tax, regulate and control marijuana, when in fact those claims turned out not to be true. Prop. 19 provided no regulation or control, no means of collecting revenue, no benefit to the public safety of Californians and could cost us billions,” he said. “No matter where voters stood on the concept of legalization, they recognized that Prop. 19 was a jumbled, legal nightmare and that the economics just didn’t pencil out.”

Read the Political Blotter at IBAbuzz.com/politics. Follow Josh Richman at Twitter.com/josh_richman.