Obama Beat Romney By 5M Votes, 51.1%-47.2%

The final vote tally in the 2012 presidential election shows that President Barack Obama won re-election by nearly 5 million votes (65,899,557 to 60,931,959, or a margin of 4,968,402) or 51.06% to 47.21%. Obama is the first president since Dwight Eisenhower to win re-election with more than 51% of the vote and the first Democratic president to do so since Franklin Roosevelt.

Bloomberg News analyzed the results:

The president won the popular vote in 26 states and the District of Columbia, totaling 332 electoral votes, or 62 more than the 270 needed to win the presidency. Romney won 24 states with 206 electoral votes. Obama won 365 electoral votes in 2008.

[...]

Turnout in this year’s presidential race was about 129.1 million, down from the record 131.3 million four years ago.

Obama’s national vote total fell by about 3.6 million votes from his record 69.5 million in 2008, when he was elected the nation’s first black president. In that race, he won 52.9 percent -- with a victory margin of more than 9.5 million votes over Republican John McCain -- amid a financial crisis that took hold at the end of Republican George W. Bush’s presidency.

The article notes that winning the presidency in 2016 will be difficult for Republicans because there are 18 states (plus DC) that have 242 electoral votes that have voted for the Democratic candidate for 6 consecutive presidential elections, while 22 states with 180 electoral votes have voted for the Republicans. So, just like in 2012, the 2016 presidential election will most likely be decided by the usual suspects: Ohio (18), Virginia (13), Florida (25), North Carolina (15) and Colorado (9).