User:DukeOfDelTaco/sandbox/Results of the 2012 United States presidential election
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This workpage details the results of the 2012 United States presidential election, which was the 57th quadrennial presidential election held on November 6, 2012. Incumbent Democratic president Barack Obama won re-election to a second term against Republican nominee Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts.
This is not a Wikipedia article: This is a workpage, a collection of material and work in progress that may or may not be incorporated into an article. It should not necessarily be considered factual or authoritative. |
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538 members of the Electoral College 270 electoral votes needed to win | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Obama won a majority of both the Electoral College and the popular vote. Obama was the first incumbent since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 to win reelection with fewer electoral votes and a smaller popular vote margin than had been won in the previous election, and was also the first two-term president since Ronald Reagan to win both his presidential bids with a majority of the nationwide popular vote, and the first Democrat to do so since Franklin D. Roosevelt. This was also the first presidential election since 1944 in which neither the Republican nor the Democratic nominee had military experience.
Obama did not hold onto Indiana, North Carolina, or Nebraska's 2nd congressional district, but crucially won the "blue wall" states and defeated Romney in other swing states the Republicans had won in 2000 and 2004, most notably Colorado, Florida, Ohio, and Virginia. Ultimately, of the nine swing states identified by The Washington Post in the 2012 election, Obama won eight, losing only North Carolina. This is the most recent presidential election when the Democratic candidate won the states of Iowa, Ohio, and Florida, along with Maine's 2nd congressional district.
This was the first election in which a major party nominee lost his home state since Al Gore lost Tennessee in 2000, as Mitt Romney lost his home state of Massachusetts.