On November 6th, Barack Obama was reelected to
his second four-year term as President of the United States. President Obama
defeated former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney with a final count of 332
to 206 Electoral College votes. Obama also defeated Romney 50% to 48% in the
popular vote. As a supporter of President Obama, I was definitely pleased with
his reelection. Still, considering what has happened in the past four years, I
am certainly surprised. By nearly all standards, President Obama defied
political odds by winning reelection to a second term.
This
post from Barack Obama quickly became the most “re-tweeted” post in Twitter’s
history.
Here
are some interesting facts related to President Obama’s reelection:
· President Obama’s margin of victory was significantly lower than
in 2008 (53% to 46%). No president has ever been re-elected by a smaller margin
than the previous election.
· Obama’s popular vote majority was the lowest of any re-elected incumbent
in the last century.
·
President Obama’s public approval ratings have
averaged below 50%. No other incumbent candidate has ever won a presidential
election with such low public approval.
·
Throughout most of President Obama’s
first term, fewer than 40% of Americans believed that the country was “moving
in the right direction”. The day after the election, only 43% of Americans
believed the country was moving in the right direction.
· Polls indicated that prospective voters favored Mitt Romney “as an
economic manager” over President Obama by a margin of roughly 9%.
· On Election Day, the unemployment rate in the United States had risen to
roughly 7.9%, which is far higher than any time in the 25 years before Obama’s
Inauguration in January 2009.
These statistics are pretty puzzling, as well as somewhat alarming. Do
Americans currently have any confidence in President Obama? They seem to lack confidence in President
Obama, yet they reelected him by a fairly convincing margin. Why did a majority
of Americans vote for President Obama? Many people, myself included, point to
changing demographics. The Sunday before the election, the Pew Research Center released its final
prediction on the outcome of the election: President Obama would win, beating
Republican Party candidate Mitt Romney, 50 percent to 47 percent. The Pew
Research Center described what it called a “demographic transformation”:
·
Women
favored Obama over Romney 53 % to 40%
·
Romney’s
support among voters age 65 and older dwindled to just 9 percentage points.
·
Nationally,
nonwhite voters made up 28% of all voters, up from 26% in 2008. Obama won 80%
of these voters, the same as four years ago.
·
In
Ohio, African Americans were 15% of the electorate, up from 11% in 2008. In
Florida, Hispanics were 17% of the electorate, an increase from 14% in 2008.
·
Nationally,
Romney won the white vote, 59% to 39%.
·
Nationally,
Obama received “overwhelming” support from African Americans and Latinos.
·
Obama
lost the independent vote, 50% to 45%. However, Democrats made up 38% of all
voters while Republicans made up just 32%.
·
40% of
white Christians voted for Obama.
·
20 % of
voters claimed no religious affiliation while roughly one-third of Americans
age 18-22 called themselves atheists, agnostics, or “nothing at all”. 70% of
this voting bloc voted for Obama.
·
Pointing
the future diminishing influence of voters age 65 or older, The Pew Research
Center’s indicated that future elections will continue to be increasingly
decided by women, young people, and minorities.
Voters in
Washington and Colorado legalized the recreational use of marijuana. In
Massachusetts, voters legalized the use of marijuana for medical reasons
I consider myself to have liberal views on social issues. However, I
describe my views on economic issues as more moderate, not liberal. I believe
the political views of my generation as a whole could also be described this
way. In the 2012 Presidential Election voters ages 18 to 29 made up 19% percent
of voters. 60% of this voting bloc voted for President Obama, while 36% voted
for Mitt Romney. The Huffington Post addressed this generation gap in an
article titled “Youth Vote Gap Suggests Republicans Risk Losing An ‘Entire
Generation’ to Democrats”.
The increasing popularity of Libertarianism, an ideology that generally
embraces socially liberal and economically conservative views, has grown
increasingly popular with younger voters. This year’s Libertarian Party for
President, Gary Johnson enthusiastically expressed his support for equal rights
for LGBTQ persons and an end to the prohibition on marijuana.
Voters in Washington, Maine, and Maryland voted in favor of the right to
marry for same-sex couples. Voters in Minnesota rejected a constitutional ban
on same-sex marriage.
I also believe that a
significant amount of all voters, not just those from my generation, were
alienated by Mitt Romney’s conservative views on a variety of social issues. In
general, Americans have begun to view with skepticism the strict laws
regulating marijuana. Americans views on civil rights for LGBTQ persons have
dramatically changed. Most research indicates that nowadays a majority of
Americans reject the idea of withholding basic civil rights (marriage,
employment protections, the right to openly serve in the military) from LGBTQ
persons. Americans also tend to view favorable granting more rights to
undocumented workers, an overwhelming majority of whom are Latino.
This widespread rejection of social conservatism, partly a result of
changing demographics in the U.S., may help explain why President Obama was
reelected even though Americans favored Mitt Romney “as an economic manager” by
a margin of roughly 9%.
I certainly do not see those Americans who embrace social conservatism
giving up their fight anytime soon. I am curious to see how this political
divide will play out in the future. Is it inevitable that we will grow even
more divided politically?
According to recent projections, the amount of
money spent on campaign advertising during the 2012 Election increased
dramatically to roughly 6 billion dollars. The dramatic increase results
directly for Citizens United v. Federal
Election Commission. In the decision, the Supreme Court held that the First
Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political
spending by corporations and unions. Political junkies expected that an
increase in spending on campaign advertising would result from the Supreme
Court’s decision. Many also predicted that the increased spending would
significantly alter election results; however, those predictions proved to be
wrong.
Major
Outcomes of the 2012 Election:
· The Republican Party still holds a majority in the House of
Representatives.
· The Democratic Party still holds a majority in the Senate.
· The Democratic Party’s candidate won reelection to a second four-year
term as president.
So what changed? Not a whole lot
besides a decrease in productive political discourse due to the substantial
increase in spending on campaign advertisements. If
anything, I think the 2012 Election (specifically the outcome of Citizens United vs. The Federal Election
Commission decision) demonstrates a genuine need for dramatic campaign
finance reform. The rise of the so-called Super PACs frustrated many Americans,
regardless of political affiliation or ideology. I am hopeful, though somewhat
skeptical, that we will soon see bipartisan action to appropriately address the
issue. The Huffington Post recently published an article pertaining to the
movement towards campaign finance reform. If we as Americans could ever come
together, I would have to believe that it would be to address this outrageous
spending on campaign advertisements.
“Youth
Vote Gap Suggests Republicans Risk Losing An ‘Entire Generation’ to Democrats”
“Campaign
Finance Reformers Get Back To Work After Record Election Spending”
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