It will be four more years for President Obama. After the most
expensive presidential campaign in history, Obama secured a second term
shortly after 11:15 p.m. ET, celebrating his hard-fought victory with an
appropriately modern-age touch: a tweet.
With the simple message, "four more years," Obama posted a picture in which he is seen hugging first lady Michelle Obama.
After a nail-biting evening in which he ran neck-and-neck with former
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney for much of the night, Obama was able
to secure the necessary 270 electoral votes by taking one of the
biggest prizes of the night: Ohio. At press time, the final tally
according to CNN was 274 electoral votes to 201 for Obama, with the
president slightly behind in the popular vote by a 50-49 percent margin,
with fewer than 700,000 votes separating them.
The good news for Obama was tempered by the fact that the president
would once again face a divided congress, with Republicans retaining a
majority in the House and Democrats a razor-thin lead in the Senate.
Pundits immediately predicted that Obama would need to make a move to
mend fences with Republicans in his second term in order to secure more
cooperation on his ambitious agenda, which includes major legislation on
immigration, the environment and tax reform.
MTV News correspondents James Montgomery and Andrew Jenks were at Romney and Obama headquarters,
as both candidates waited out the results. Before the final numbers
were announced, young voter Sophia at Obama HQ was overwhelmed by the
electricity inside McCormick Place as the throng of supporters watched
the results roll in.
"It's electric. It's amazing," she told MTV News. "I'm so excited to be here."
source: mtv.com
Showing posts with label President Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label President Obama. Show all posts
Three reasons Obama will win; three reasons Romney will win
The most expensive election in U.S. history is almost over, and most public polls suggest President Obama has a small, but persistent, edge over his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.
But before the final vote counts, here are three reasons each candidate has to expect victory, and a key place to watch to see who is right.
Reasons Obama will win
Economic optimism: Yes,
unemployment remains high at 7.9%, and the recovery has been slow. But
slow growth and no growth sit worlds apart. Incumbent presidents
presiding over a growing economy with rising job numbers in the election
year almost always prevail. Moreover, ever since the summer, the number
of Americans expressing optimism about the economy’s future has grown.
That shift shows up in pre-election polls as well as in rising consumer
confidence.
Increased optimism has provided crucial
lift for Obama — he wins overwhelmingly among voters who say the economy
will be better next year — and it could be particularly important in
key Midwestern contests, including Wisconsin and Ohio.
Latinos: For at least a decade, Karl Rove
and other Republican strategists have warned that the party risked
failure if it could not find a way to reach out to the country’s
fast-growing Latino population. Instead of doing so this year, Mitt
Romney ran a primary campaign that stressed hard-line positions against
illegal immigration. The goal was to outflank Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and it succeeded, but at high cost. (And ultimately, Perry did so poorly that he might have lost anyway.)
Polls
of Latino voters show that Obama probably will get 70% or more of their
vote. Already, early vote statistics indicate that strong support from
Latinos has given Obama a big lead in Nevada. Depending on the size of
the Latino turnout, he could add Colorado and Florida to his column.
Ground game: From strategists David Axelrod
and David Plouffe and campaign manager Jim Messina on down, Obama
campaign officials have said for more than a year that the organization
they were building to identify, register, mobilize and turn out
supporters would provide the difference in a close election. So far, in
the early voting, that organization has largely performed as advertised.
Even in North Carolina, where most polls have pointed to a Romney victory, Democrats
have a slightly larger edge in the early vote than they had in 2008,
when Obama won the state by the slenderest of margins. In Ohio and
Florida, long lines, mostly of Obama supporters, circled early voting
locations over the weekend and Monday. The campaign has benefited from
new techniques in identifying and targeting supporters and motivating
them to show up at the polls. And although Republicans
also have proved they can turn out their supporters — they showed that
this spring in Wisconsin’s recall election, for example — the Democrats
appear to have an edge.
Reasons Romney will win
Economic performance: Yes,
optimism is on the rise, but there’s no denying that a majority of
Americans believes the country is headed in the wrong direction and
doesn’t have confidence that Obama’s economic policies will fix it. With
the economy as the issue that the great majority of voters consider
their top priority, Republicans have argued that wavering voters in the
end will come down on the challenger’s side. The most recent Pew
Research Center survey showed Obama with a slight edge, but also showed that the number of voters who said they might yet change their minds was enough to switch the outcome.
Understating the GOP vote: Among
Republican pollsters, several believe that the public polls conducted
by news organizations, universities and research centers like Pew have
all understated the Republican vote. The arguments for that position
vary. A chief one is that the methods pollsters use to identify likely
voters have overstated the partisan gap between Democrats and
Republicans.
In the 2004 election, exit polls showed
the number of voters identifying with each party was roughly equal. In
2008, Democrats had a substantial edge. Most, though not all, public
polls look more like 2008 than 2004, with more self-identified Democrats
than Republicans. The Republicans who doubt those polls say the
Democratic edge in 2008 was a one-time thing, brought on by Obama’s
popularity that year. This year’s party identification should look more
like 2004, they argue. Nonpartisan pollsters dispute that argument, but
if it’s correct, Romney almost certainly will do better than the polls
have indicated.
A smaller, older and whiter electorate: In
2008, 61.6% of the population potentially eligible to register and vote
actually cast ballots. That was the highest level since before 1971,
when the 26th Amendment to the Constitution gave 18-year-olds the right
to vote. Most analysts expect this year’s turnout percentage to be
lower. But how much? And which voters will stay home?
Professor
Michael McDonald of George Mason University, the leading expert on
voter turnout, estimates that 60% to 61% of the voter-eligible
population will turn out. That would put the 2012 turnout level slightly
lower than that of 2008, but likely higher than 2004’s 60.1%.
Some
Republicans expect a bigger decline. They believe turnout of younger
voters will drop significantly from 2008 levels and that minority
turnout also will decline because of what they see as lowered enthusiasm
for Obama. Turnout of older, white voters will rise because of greater
intensity on the GOP side, they predict. The result would be an
electorate that is both older and whiter than the one in 2008, which was
74% non-Latino whites, according to exit polls.
In
2004, when Bush won reelection, non-Latino whites made up 77% of the
electorate, and in the 2010 midterm elections, when Republicans regained
control of the House, the white share was 78%. Many Democratic
strategists expect the white share of the electorate to fall to 73% this
year, but some Republicans expect the white share to rise, which would
give Romney an edge in key states because of the sharp racial
polarization of the vote.
Early clues to which side is right?
Look
for the returns from Virginia, which has among the earliest
poll-closing times in the country: 7 p.m. Eastern time. Minority
turnout, economic optimism and the strength of Obama’s ground game all
will be in play there. If the results come in strongly for one candidate
or the other, it could set the pattern for the night.
source: latimes.com
Stevie Wonder, Dave Matthews, Pitbull and More Rally for Obama
A high-profile cast of musicians fanned out in support of President Obama at rallies around the country over the weekend as part of a final push in his re-election campaign, according to multiple news reports. John Mellencamp appeared with Obama in Iowa, Stevie Wonder warmed up a crowd in Cincinnati, Pitbull introduced the president in Hollywood, Florida, and Dave Matthews joined Obama Saturday in Bristow, Virginia, and yesterday in Aurora, Colorado.
Wonder, who recently released a song for Obama, joked with the crowd in Ohio before he played "Sir Duke," saying, "You know, I've not looked at either candidate," then pausing for a wave of laughter as the joke sank in. "So it's not based on that, the color of their skin. But I must tell you, it's based on their spirit."
Pitbull didn't perform in Florida, but the first-generation Cuban-American did talk about "what my family went through to be able to appreciate the opportunity that this country gives me," and emphasized a sense of commonality.
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