I missed this but it appears the title tag length in the Google search results is not necessarily measured by the number of characters but the width of all the characters together.

There are blog posts on this by Chris Turner and older posts from a year or so ago from SEOmofo.

They say it is not about the number characters but the width in pixels of those characters together.

How long can it go? Estimates are about 584 pixels wide, which can be over 107 characters.

SEOmofo has a bookmarklet that does the counting for you.

This is why Google shies away from giving a specific number of characters on the title tag. It is not about the number of characters but what is best for the searcher ti click on.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.