President Barack Obama handily defeated Gov. Mitt
Romney and won himself a second term Tuesday after a bitter and historically
expensive race that was primarily fought in just a handful of battleground
states. Networks project that Obama beat Romney after nabbing the crucial state
of Ohio.
The Romney campaign’s last-ditch attempt to put
blue-leaning Midwestern swing states in play failed as Obama’s Midwestern
firewall sent the president back to the White House for four more years. Obama
picked up the swing states of New Hampshire, Michigan, New Mexico, Iowa,
Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Ohio. Florida and Virginia are still
too close to call, but even if he won them, they would not give Romney enough
Electoral College votes to put him over the top. The popular vote will most
likely be much narrower than the president’s Electoral College victory.
The Obama victory marks an end to a years-long
campaign that saw historic advertisement spending levels, countless rallies and
speeches, and three much-watched debates.
The Romney campaign cast the election as a
referendum on Obama’s economic policies, frequently comparing him to former
President Jimmy Carter and asking voters the Reagan-esque question of whether
they are better off than they were four years ago. But the Obama campaign
pushed back on the referendum framing, blanketing key states such as Ohio early
on with ads painting him as a multimillionaire more concerned with profits than
people. The Obama campaign also aggressively attacked Romney on reproductive
rights issues, tying Romney to a handful of Republican candidates who made
controversial comments about rape and abortion.
These ads were one reason Romney faced a steep
likeability problem for most of the race, until his expert performance at the
first presidential debate in Denver in October. After that debate, and a near
universal panning of Obama’s performance, Romney caught up with Obama in
national polls, and almost closed his favoribility gap with the president. In
polls, voters consistently gave him an edge over Obama on who would handle the
economy better and create more jobs, even as they rated Obama higher on caring
about the middle class.
But the president’s Midwestern firewall–and the
campaign’s impressive grassroots operation–carried him through. Ohio tends to
vote a bit more Republican than the nation as a whole, but Obama was able to
stave off that trend and hold an edge there over Romney, perhaps due to the
president’s support of the auto bailout three years ago. Romney and his running
mate Paul Ryan all but moved to Ohio in the last weeks of the campaign, trying
and ultimately failing to erase Obama’s lead there.
A shrinking electoral battleground this year
meant that only 14 states were really seen as in play, and both candidates
spent most of their time and money in those states. Though national polls
showed the two candidates in a dead heat, Obama consistently held a lead in the
states that mattered. That, and his campaign’s much-touted get out the vote
efforts and overall ground game, may be what pushed Obama over the finish line.
Now, Obama heads back to office facing what will
most likely be bitterly partisan negotiations over whether the Bush tax cuts should
expire. The House will still be majority Republican, with Democrats maintaining
their majority in the Senate.
The loss may provoke some soul searching in the
Republican Party. This election was seen as a prime opportunity to unseat
Obama, as polls showed Americans were unhappy with a sluggish economy, sky-high
unemployment, and a health care reform bill that remained widely unpopular.
Romney took hardline positions on immigration, federal spending, and taxes
during the long Republican primary when he faced multiple challenges from the
right. He later shifted to the center in tone on many of those issues, but it’s
possible the primary painted him into a too-conservative corner to appeal to
moderates during the general election. The candidate also at times seemed
unable to effectively counter Democratic attacks on his business experience and
personal wealth.
The Punch
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