It was a huge night for President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.
Video And Pics After The Jump
Via NY Daily News
After a tense and bitter campaign, President Obama rolled to reelection Tuesday night, winning a new chance to repair the nation’s economy and fulfill the promises of hope and change he made four years ago.
First Pennsylvania, then New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Iowa and Colorado fell to Obama. When Ohio was called for the incumbent, a roar went up at Obama’s Chicago headquarters.
Moments later, Obama sent this message on Twitter: “We’re all in this together. That’s how we campaigned, and that’s who we are.”
The First Family takes it all in.
President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden embrace after his victory speech.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney delivers his concession speech at an election night rally at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.
The nation’s first African-American President will take his second oath of office on Jan. 20, having beaten back a Republican Party that vowed to make him a one-term President.
The Romneys are gracious in defeat.
He will face a divided capital — Democrats held onto the Senate while Republicans remain in control of the House of Representatives — and a looming fiscal cliff that could slash government spending and raise taxes on most Americans.
Both sides had settled in for a long Election Night, preparing to potentially wait days for an outcome. Instead, the night ended with surprising and decisive swiftness.
Early returns showed neck-and-neck contests in virtually every one of the nine battleground states. But they fell one after another, just as the polls predicted, almost all going for the President.
President Barack Obama supporters cheer while watching the returns prior to his election night rally in Chicago, November 6, 2012
Obama’s Midwest firewall — Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin — held. The President also captured Virginia, a state Romney needed to win, giving him at least 303 electoral votes as the calendar flipped to Wednesday.
Romney lost his native Michigan and current home state of Massachusetts. Combined with his loss in Wisconsin, the birthplace of his running mate Paul Ryan, the GOP ticket became the first national ticket to lose both candidates’ home states since Democrats George McGovern and Sargent Shriver did in 1972.
Romney supporters react at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center after media outlets projected a loss for their candidate.
Despite Obama’s decisive advantage in the Electoral College, the popular vote remained close. With 88% of the precincts reporting, at 2:49 a.m. Wednesday, Obama led Romney 50% to 49%, a margin of nearly 1.4 million votes.
The suspenseful and extraordinarily expensive election drew to a close as Americans — millions still recovering from the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Sandy — braved long lines at the polls to cast their votes.
For most, the nation’s massive debt and struggling economy remained at the forefront. Sixty percent of those questioned in exit polls called the the economy their No. 1 issue. But more said Bush was to blame for the current conditions rather than Obama.
President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden congratulate each other after Tuesday's victory.
Obama won despite a national unemployment rate of 7.9%, the highest any President has overcome since Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression.
Four years ago, Obama’s lofty oratory and this historic nature of his candidacy drew hundreds of thousands of people to rallies and inspired legions of new voters who helped capture several states that had been traditional GOP strongholds.
But Democrats’ enthusiasm was not nearly as high this time after many of the President’s promises were lost to Washington gridlock and his soaring rhetoric was weighed down by the burdens of office. He struggled to frame his major legislative accomplishments — in particular the national health care reform known as Obamacare — and his party took a beating in the 2010 midterm.
The crowd in Times Square celebrates together Tuesday night as news outlets begin reporting Obama as the projected winner of the presidential race.
This time, Obama’s campaign was forced to wage a gritty, county-by-county fight. His team spent four years building an elaborate ground game that turned out a winning coalition that looked similar to the one that first carried him into office: women, young voters, African-Americans and, most especially, Latinos.
“I think that shows you how the demographic shifts in the party compositions that started in 2008 have grown bigger,” said Prof. Wendy Schiller of Brown University. “I don’t think you can be as white, male, and as conservative as the GOP was this year and still win a national election.”
Greg Kearney, 18, a Fordham University student (center), celebrates Obama's election victory in Rockefeller Center with a cigar.
The Obama campaign trotted out a team of indefatigable surrogates, including Vice President Biden and former President Bill Clinton, who criss-crossed the battlegrounds day after day. And they relentlessly promoted early voting — more than 30 million Americans cast their ballots before Election Day, including Obama himself.
The President is now the third consecutive incumbent to win a second term.
The bitterness that was evident throughout the race was clear even in the campaign’s final moments.
For more than an hour after the networks declared Obama the winner, Romney remained inside his headquarters, delaying what the math said was inevitable. Like his father before him, the failed White House bid likely ends Romney’s political career.
Ryan, however, won reelection to his House seat in Wisconsin.
Supporters go wild at McCormick Place in Chicago as President Obama wins the election.
The candidates, their parties and outside groups known as Super PACs spent $2.6 billion on the campaign, by far the most in history.
Confusion ran rampant at polling places in states ravaged by Superstorm Sandy and long lines of voters were reported in battlegrounds like Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Both campaigns dispatched lawyers to scores of polling sites to help their supporters cast their ballots — and to gather information for potential lawsuits that could challenge the election’s outcome.
Touting his business experience, Romney pledged to jumpstart an economy that showed consistent, but small, growth during Obama’s first term.
A one-term governor from Massachusetts, Romney failed to capture the Republican nomination in 2008 but entered this year’s GOP primary sweepstakes as the early favorite. But the lengthy primary process, which at times resembled a circus sideshow featured carnival barkers like Herman Cain, Donald Trump and Michele Bachmann, was a harder slog than expected and left Romney bruised heading into a general election fight with Obama’s battle-hardened crew.
The incumbent’s team, based in Chicago rather than Washington, made the tactical decision to spend huge sums of campaign cash early to define Romney as a heartless corporate raider and flip-flopper.
Romney gained ground as a result of his strong performance in the first debate with Obama. But as Election Day neared, Romney’s momentum slowed — in part due to the superstorm.
As Sandy dominated news coverage, Obama took a break from the campaign trail to manage the federal government’s response to the storm, which allowed him to provide leadership in a time of crisis. Obama also sparked a bipartisan bromance with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who had been a top Romney surrogate.
“It was probably a little bit of a lot of things,” a senior Romney adviser told the Daily News. “And when we finally got our footing, along came Sandy.”
President Obama give victory speech.
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