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Obama’s Night Obama Wins New Term as Electoral Advantage Holds
(35 minutes later)
Barack Obama was re-elected as president on Tuesday, the television networks projected, defeating Mitt Romney after a long, hard-fought campaign that centered on who would heal the battered economy and on what role government should play in the 21st century. Barack Hussein Obama was re-elected president of the United States on Tuesday, overcoming powerful economic headwinds, a lock-step resistance to his agenda by Republicans in Congress and an unprecedented torrent of advertising as the nation voted to give him a second chance to change Washington.
The president’s official Twitter account quickly posted: “This happened because of you. Thank you.” In defeating Mitt Romney, the president carried Wisconsin, Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado and Virginia and was holding on to a narrow advantage in Ohio and Florida. The path to victory for Mr. Romney narrowed as the night wore along, with Mr. Obama steadily climbing toward the 270 electoral votes needed to win a second term.
CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News all projected that Mr. Obama would defeat Mr. Romney after concluding that he would win the necessary 270 electoral votes. A cheer of jubilation sounded at the Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago when the television networks began projecting him as the winner at 11:20 p.m., even as the ballots were still being counted in many states where voters had waited in line well into the night. The victory was far narrower than his historic election four years ago, but it was no less dramatic.
Mr. Obama carried New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and was projected by television networks to win Wisconsin, three states Mr. Romney had pursued to block Mr. Obama’s re-election. As a succession of states fell away from Mr. Romney, a hush fell over his Boston headquarters on Tuesday night. Two advisers said in interviews that the contest seemed over, but Mr. Romney was not conceding, with the electoral votes from Ohio and Florida still outstanding.
As a succession of states fell away from Mr. Romney, a hush fell over his Boston headquarters. Advisers sounded uncharacteristically pessimistic about what they acknowledged were dwindling chances of winning an Electoral College majority. The evening was not without the drama that has come to mark so many recent elections: Even after Fox News Channel projected that Mr. Obama would win Ohio — effectively sealing Mr. Obama’s re-election — its on-air analyst, the Republican strategist Karl Rove, was arguing that it had done so too quickly and that Mr. Romney still had a chance.
The mood at the Obama campaign in Chicago was optimistic as the outcome of the race was dependent on Mr. Romney’s running the table in the rest of the competitive battleground states. Hispanics made up an important part of Mr. Obama’s winning coalition, preliminary exit poll data showed. And before the night was through, there were already recriminations from Republican moderates who said Mr. Romney had gone too far in his rhetoric against those here illegally during the primaries, including his promise that his get-tough policies would cause some to “self deport.”
Mr. Obama, 51, faces governing in a deeply divided country and a partisan-rich capital, where Republicans retained their majority in the House of Representatives and Democrats kept their control of the Senate. His re-election offers him a second chance that will quickly be tested, given the rapidly-escalating fiscal showdown.
For Mr. Obama, the result brings a ratification of his sweeping health care act, which Mr. Romney had vowed to repeal. The law will now continue on course toward nearly full implementation in 2014, promising to significantly change the way medical services are administrated nationwide.
Confident that the economy is finally on a true path toward stability, Mr. Obama and his aides have hinted that he would seek to tackle some of the grand but unrealized promises of his first campaign, including the sort of immigration overhaul that has eluded presidents of both parties for decades.
But he will be venturing back into a Congressional environment similar to that of his first term, with the Senate under the control of Democrats and the House under the control of Republicans, whose leaders have hinted that they will be no less likely to challenge him than they were during the last four years.
The state-by-state pursuit of 270 electoral votes was being closely tracked by both campaigns, with Mr. Romney winning North Carolina and Indiana, which Mr. Obama carried four years ago. But Mr. Obama won Michigan, the state where Mr. Romney was born, and Minnesota, a pair of states that Republican groups had spent millions trying to make competitive.
Americans delivered a final judgment on a long and bitter campaign that drew so many people to the polls that several key states extended voting for hours. In Virginia and Florida, long lines stretched from polling places, with the Obama campaign sending text messages to supporters in those areas, saying: “You can still vote.”Americans delivered a final judgment on a long and bitter campaign that drew so many people to the polls that several key states extended voting for hours. In Virginia and Florida, long lines stretched from polling places, with the Obama campaign sending text messages to supporters in those areas, saying: “You can still vote.”
The state-by-state pursuit of the 270 electoral votes was being closely tracked by both campaigns, with Mr. Romney winning North Carolina and Indiana, which Mr. Obama carried four years ago. But Mr. Obama won Michigan, the state where Mr. Romney was born, and Minnesota, a pair of states that Republican groups had spent millions of dollars trying to make competitive. Neither party could predict how the outcome would affect the direction of the Republican Party. Moderates were hopeful it would lead the rank and file to realize that the party’s grass-roots conservatism that Mr. Romney pledged himself to during the primaries doomed him in the general election. Tea Party adherents have indicated that they will argue that he was damaged because of his move to middle ground during the general election.
The contests were hanging on the outcome of only a few key counties in the battleground states. In Florida, for example, the two candidates were separated by only thousands of votes out of more than six million ballots cast, with nearly 90 percent of precincts reporting. The results were more a matter of voters giving Mr. Obama more time than a second chance. Through most of the year slight majorities of voters had told pollsters that they believed his policies would improve the economy if they could stay in place into the future.
The top issue on the minds of voters was the economy, according to interviews, with three-quarters of those surveyed saying that economic conditions were not good or poor. But only 3 in 10 said things were getting worse, and 4 in 10 said the economy was improving. Mr. Obama’s campaign team built its coalition the hard way, through intensive efforts to find and motivate supporters who had lost the ardor of four years ago and, Mr. Obama’s strategists feared, might not find their way to polls if left to their own devices.
Mr. Romney, who campaigned aggressively on his ability to reverse the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, was given a narrow edge when voters were asked which candidate was better equipped to handle the economy, the interviews found. Up against real enthusiasm for Mr. Romney — or, just as important, against Mr. Obama — among Republicans and many independents, their strategy of spending vast sums of money on their get-out-the-vote operation seemed vindicated on Tuesday.
The electorate was split along partisan lines over a question that has driven much of the campaign debate: whether it was Mr. Obama or his predecessor, George W. Bush, who bore the most responsibility for the nation’s continued economic challenges. Roughly half of independent voters said that Mr. Bush should be held responsible. As opinion surveys that followed the first debate between Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama showed a tightening race, Mr. Obama’s team had insisted that its coalition was coming together as it hoped it would. In the end, it was not a bluff.
Americans went to the polls in makeshift voting sites in East Coast communities devastated by Hurricane Sandy and traditional voting booths set up in school gyms, libraries and town halls across the rest of the country. Even though more than 30 million Americans had already voted before Election Day, many people said they waited for hours to cast their ballots on Tuesday. Even with Mr. Obama pulling off a new sweep of the highly-contested battlegrounds from Nevada to New Hampshire, the result in each of the states was very narrow. The Romney campaign was taking its time early Wednesday to review the outcome and searching for any irregularities.
At one precinct in Prince William County, Va., election officials expected lines to remain until 10 p.m. or later. Tony Guiffre, the secretary of the elections board in the county, said hundreds of voters in line when the polls were scheduled to close at 7 p.m. were ushered inside the school and the doors were closed. The top issue on the minds of voters was the economy, according to interviews, with three-quarters saying that economic conditions were not good or poor. But only 3 in 10 said things were getting worse and 4 in 10 said the economy was improving.
Four years after Mr. Obama drew broad support across so many categories of voters, the national electorate appeared to have withdrawn to its more familiar demographic borders, according to polls conducted by Edison Research. Mr. Obama’s coalition included support from blacks, Hispanics, women, those under 30, those in unions, gay men and lesbians and Jews. Mr. Romney, who campaigned aggressively on his ability to turn around the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, was given a narrow edge when voters were asked which candidate was better equipped to handle the economy, the interviews found.
Mr. Romney’s coalition included disproportionate support from whites, men, older people, high-income voters, evangelicals, those from suburban and rural counties, and those who call themselves adherents of the Tea Party — a group that had resisted him through the primaries but fully embraced him by Election Day. The electorate was split along partisan lines over a question that has driven much of the campaign debate, whether it was Mr. Obama or his predecessor, former President George W. Bush, who bore the most responsibility for the nation’s continued economic challenges. But about 4 in 10 of independent voters said that Mr. Bush should be held responsible.
It was the first presidential election since the 2010 Supreme Court decision loosening restrictions on political spending, and the first in which both major party candidates opted out of the campaign matching system that imposes spending limits in return for federal financing. And the overall cost of the campaign rose accordingly, with all candidates for federal office, their parties and their supportive “super PACs” spending more than $6 billion combined. The president built a muscular campaign organization and used a strong financial advantage to hold off an array of forces that opposed his candidacy. The margin of his victory was smaller than in 2008 — the winner of the popular vote was still in doubt early Wednesday – but a strategic firewall in several battleground states protected his Electoral College majority.
The results Tuesday were certain to be parsed for days to determine just what effect the spending had, and who would be more irate at the answer — the donors who spent millions of dollars of their own money for a certain outcome, or those who found a barrage of negative advertising to be major factors in their defeats. As Mr. Romney gained steam and stature in the final weeks of the campaign, one thing perhaps above all others that the Obama campaign put its hopes in: that the rebound in the auto industry after the president’s bailout package of 2009 would give him the winning edge in Ohio, a linchpin of his road to re-election.
While the campaign often seemed small and petty, with Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama intensely quarreling and bickering, the contest was actually rooted in big and consequential decisions, with the role of the federal government squarely at the center of the debate.
Though Mr. Obama’s health care law galvanized his most ardent opposition, and continually drew low ratings in polls as a whole, interviews with voters found that nearly half wanted to see it kept intact or expanded, a quarter wanted to see it repealed entirely and another quarter said they wanted portions of it repealed.
Even after such a bruising campaign, the interviews showed that a narrow majority of voters approved of Mr. Obama’s job performance. In an indication that his handling of the response to Hurricane Sandy helped his standing, three-fifths of those surveyed said it was a factor in their vote, and two-fifths said it was an important one.
The interviews with voters found that Mr. Obama had an edge on empathy, with somewhat more voters saying he was more in touch with people like them. A plurality said his policies generally favored the middle class, while more than half said Mr. Romney’s favored the rich.
Mr. Romney’s campaign was intently focused in the final weeks of the campaign on shaving down Mr. Obama’s at times considerable advantage among female voters, running ads emphasizing, for example, that his opposition to abortion did not extend to cases of rape or incest.
But the interviews showed that women and men continued to have starkly different views of the candidates. A majority of men said they were angry or dissatisfied with Mr. Obama’s administration; a majority of women said they were enthusiastic or satisfied with it.
As ballots were counted into the night on Tuesday, the contests in Florida, Virginia and Ohio were exceedingly close, according to early tallies and interviews with both campaigns. The 18 electoral votes of Ohio remained the central focus of the race, a key to the strategies of both sides.
As Mr. Romney gained steam and stature in the final weeks of the campaign, the Obama campaign put its hopes in one thing perhaps above all others: that the rebound in the auto industry after the president’s bailout package of 2009 would give him the winning edge in Ohio, a linchpin of his road to re-election.
Early interviews with voters showed that just over half of Ohio voters approved of the bailout, a result that was balanced by a less encouraging sign for the president: Some 4 in 10 said they or someone in their household had lost a job over the last four years.Early interviews with voters showed that just over half of Ohio voters approved of the bailout, a result that was balanced by a less encouraging sign for the president: Some 4 in 10 said they or someone in their household had lost a job over the last four years.
A final and frenetic get-out-the-vote drive took place on Tuesday. The strong early-voting program was central to Mr. Obama’s performance in Ohio. He was narrowly leading Mr. Romney in Hamilton County, home to Cincinnati, but only because of the amount of votes he banked in the month leading up to Election Day.
Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, cast his vote Tuesday morning near his home in Belmont, Mass. When a reporter asked him for whom he had voted, Mr. Romney replied, “I think you know.” Four years after Mr. Obama drew broad support across so many categories of voters, the national electorate appeared to have withdrawn to its more familiar, demographic borders, according to exit polls conducted by Edison Research. Mr. Obama’s coalition included disproportionate support from blacks, Hispanics, women, those under 30, those in unions, gays and Jews, though his support among Jews appeared to have diminished some.
Both campaigns continued trying to grind out votes on Tuesday, with Mr. Romney joining his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, in Cleveland. They crossed paths with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who also wedged in one final visit to Ohio, where the 18 electoral votes are at the center of both campaigns’ strategies. Mr. Romney’s coalition included disproportionate support from whites, men, older people, high-income voters, evangelicals, those from suburban and rural counties, and those who call themselves adherents of the Tea Party — a group that had resisted him through the primaries but had fully embraced him by Election Day.
Mr. Obama had voted Oct. 25 in Chicago, becoming one of more than 31 million people who voted early this year. The president visited a campaign office in Chicago on Tuesday morning, where he called and thanked several startled volunteers in Wisconsin and then spoke briefly to the reporters who were traveling with him, congratulating Mr. Romney for his campaign. The Republican Party seemed destined for a new round of self-reflection over how it approaches Hispanics going forward, a fast-growing portion of the voting population that senior party strategists had sought to woo before a strain of intense anti-illegal immigration activism took hold within the Republican grassroots.
“I also want to say to Governor Romney, congratulations on a spirited campaign,” Mr. Obama said. “I know that his supporters are just as engaged and just as enthusiastic and working just as hard today. We feel confident we’ve got the votes to win, that it’s going to depend ultimately on whether those votes turn out.” It was the first presidential election since the 2010 Supreme Court decision loosening restrictions on political spending, and the first in which both majorparty candidates opted out of the campaign matching system that imposes spending limits in return for federal financing. And the overall cost of the campaign rose accordingly, with all candidates for federal office, their parties and their supportive “super PACs” spending more than $6 billion combined.
As he waited to learn his fate on Tuesday, Mr. Obama conducted a round of satellite television interviews with local stations to urge his supporters to cast their ballots. Then, he continued a tradition he started four years ago of playing basketball on the afternoon of Election Day. The results Tuesday were certain to be parsed for days to determine just what effect the spending had, and who would be more irate at the answer — the donors who spent literally millions of dollars of their own money for a certain outcome, or those who found a barrage of negative advertising to be major factors in their defeats.
While the campaign often seemed small and petty, with Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama intensely quarreling and bickering, the contest was actually rooted in big and consequential decisions, with the role of the federal government squarely at the center of the debate.
Though Mr. Obama’s health care law galvanized his most ardent opposition, and continually drew low ratings in polls as a whole, interviews with voters found that nearly half wanted to see it kept intact or expanded, a quarter of wanted to see it repealed entirely and another quarter said they wanted portions of it repealed.
In Chicago, as crowds waited for Mr. Obama to deliver his speech, his supporters erupted into a roar of relief and elation. Car horns honked from the street as people chanted the president’s name.
“I feel like it’s a repudiation of everything the Republicans said in the campaign,” said Jasmyne Walker, 31, who jumped up and down on the edge of a stone planter in a downtown plaza. “Everybody said that if he lost it would be buyer’s remorse—that we were high on hope in 2008. This says we’re on the right track. I feel like this confirms that.”

Michael Cooper contributed reporting.