2012 Election Results

I think the election results have been finalized now. Obama received 51% of the popular vote compared to 47.2% for Romney. Obama received 3.6 million fewer votes than in 2008 and Romney had 983,000 more votes than John McCain. In total there were 2.1 million fewer votes than in the last presidential election. This marks the first decline in voter turnout since the 1996 election when Ross Perot came in third place with 8 million votes and 8.4% of the total.

Combined with the previous reelections of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama's victory marks the second time that three consecutive American presidents have achieved reelection (the first three being Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe). The 126 vote difference in electoral votes between Obama and Romney made 2012 the 21st closest election out of the 57 presidential elections.

The 2012 election was the first in U.S. history in which both major party candidates received more than 60 million votes, and the first time since Franklin D. Roosevelt's last two re-elections in 1940 and 1944 that a Democratic presidential candidate won a majority of the popular vote in two consecutive elections. Andrew Jackson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Obama are the only three candidates of the Democratic Party who have secured a majority of the popular vote in consecutive elections. The non-Democrats to have done so are George Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.

Obama became the first president since Ronald Reagan, and the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt, to win two presidential elections with an absolute majority of the nationwide popular vote. He became the first president since Eisenhower, and only the fifth President since the Civil War, to win at least 51% of the popular vote twice.

Obama is the third president to win re-election with a lower percentage of both the electoral vote and the popular vote, preceded by Madison in 1812 and FDR in 1940 and 1944 for his third and fourth terms. Obama is also the first president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916 to win his second term with a lower electoral vote. Since Madison and Wilson received more votes in their bids for a second term, Obama is the first president ever to win a second term with a smaller number of votes. Obama became the first president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be re-elected with unemployment above 7.2%.

Romney is the first presidential candidate from a major party to lose his home state since the 2000 presidential election. Romney lost his home state of Massachusetts by more than 23% – the largest margin of any major-party candidate since the Civil War. Romney's vote share of 37.5% in his home state was the lowest of any major-party candidate since Herbert Hoover in 1932. In addition, since Obama carried the state of Wisconsin, the Romney/Ryan ticket was the first major-party ticket to have both of its nominees lose their home states since the 1972 election. Obama became the first Democrat to win the White House while carrying only two former Confederate states. Compared to 2008 Obama received fewer votes in 41 states and the Republicans received fewer votes in 14 states. While third-party voting had no significant impact on the outcome, Gary Johnson's 1.27 million votes set a Libertarian Party record, and his 0.99% of the popular vote is the second-best showing for a Libertarian in a presidential election, trailing only Ed Clark's 1.06% in 1980. Collectively, third-party candidates earned about 1.7% of the popular vote, the highest since receiving 3.75% in the 2000 election.