US election results: Four more years for President Obama

RESULTS

Barack Obama Democrat	332	270 to win	206	Mitt Romney Republican
VERMONT	3		11	INDIANA
DELAWARE	3		8	KENTUCKY
ILLINOIS	20		5	WEST VIRGINIA
MAINE	4		9	SOUTH CAROLINA
MARYLAND	10		7	OKLAHOMA
MASSACHUSETTS	11		9	ALABAMA
RHODE ISLAND	4		16	GEORGIA
DISTRICT of COLUMBIA	3		11	TENNESSEE
CONNECTICUT	7		6	ARKANSAS
NEW JERSEY	14		6	MISSISSIPPI
NEW YORK	29		6	KANSAS
MICHIGAN	16		8	LOUISIANA
PENNSYLVANIA	20		3	NORTH DAKOTA
WISCONSIN	10		3	SOUTH DAKOTA
NEW HAMPSHIRE	4		3	WYOMING
MINNESOTA	10		38	TEXAS
NEW MEXICO	5		5	NEBRASKA
WASHINGTON	12		3	MONTANA
CALIFORNIA	55		6	UTAH
HAWAII	4		11	ARIZONA
OREGON	7		10	MISSOURI
IOWA	6		4	IDAHO
OHIO	18		15	NORTH CAROLINA
VIRGINIA	13		3	ALASKA
FLORIDA	29
COLORADO	9
NEVADA	6
- House of Representatives	193		233	- House of Representatives
- Senators	53		45	- Senators
- Popular vote	50.4%		48.1%	- Popular vote

BARACK OBAMA reached out across the political divide today following his re-election as President of the United States last night.

Mr Obama beat Republican challenger Mitt Romney, narrowly in the popular vote but convincingly in the all-important Electoral College as the election met with most pollsters expectations.

The big moment happened at 4.25am GMT this morning as American networks called the election in favour of the incumbent, and here the BBC and Sky followed suit.

Trusty bellwether Ohio had once again proved to be the tipping point, taking Mr Obama past the 270 Electoral College votes required for victory.

With ballots still being counted and verified in Florida, it has been confirmed that Mr Obama currently has 303 Electoral College votes, 97 more than his opponent Mr Romney.

And the truth is that Mr Romney has barely changed the electoral map from four years ago, only managing to force Indiana and North Carolina to change hands.

Otherwise - in the eight states identified in my preview post as the battlegrounds - Mr Obama did superbly, taking seven of them, with Florida potentially making it a clean sweep.

But, in the other nationwide elections, matters did not go quite so well for the Democrats.

Mr Obama's party still has a majority in the Senate with 53 seats out of 100. However, control of the House of Representatives remains with the Republicans - and that means Mr Obama must work more effectively with his opponents than he did at times in his first term.

The 44th President also has pressing foreign policy matters to deal with. Most prominent of them is the ongoing nuclear developments in Iran, and the Israeli reaction to it, and it can be expected that there will be a round of diplomacy between the countries soon.

Elsewhere, Mr Obama will need to meet his promise to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan by 2014. And, thirdly, liberals and anti-war campaigners can only hope for movement on the closure of Guantanamo Bay and a reduction in the number of drone attacks on Pakistan.

Clearly, there is much work still left to be done and, even to many of his supporters, Mr Obama's first term in office was not a great success.

Ultimately, though, the electorate has still placed its trust in him over Mr Romney - and that means Republican supporters like Donald Trump, who took to Twitter to gnash their teeth about the future of the USA, really need to take a closer look at their own party.

It is easy now to forget, after weeks and weeks of this sometimes bitter campaign, but Mr Romney was actually seen by Republicans as a moderate candidate. Indeed, he was regarded as being too moderate during the primary season in which he became the GOP choice.

Only when Mr Romney's victory in that race became inevitable did the likes of the Tea Party wing get behind him, and it is undoubtedly the case that the Republican party has moved politically to the right.

Strangely, in making this shift, the Republicans do not seem to realise that it is not doing them any good.

Including the George W Bush victory in 2000, the GOP has lost the popular vote in five of the last six elections, and it is not difficult to see some of the reasons why.

Republican supporters are primarily - though, of course, not exclusively - elderly, white males... whereas the demographics of the USA are changing so that an increasing number of voters are young, black or Hispanic, and, indeed, female.

So, never mind the fact that Mr Obama must now reach across a bitterly divide nation. If the Republican party cannot begin to appeal to a much broader base of support, it will continue to struggle to win elections for President.

The American people know a phoney when they see one. Of course, the election and subsequent re-election of Mr Bush jnr may have suggested otherwise, but its people appear somewhat wiser now.

Mr Romney spent much of the campaign focusing on the poor state of the economy, making dire warnings of what would happen if the country was subjected to another four years of Mr Obama.

All the while, he and his team seemed oblivious to a jobs situation which was actually gradually improving.

Moreover, a big reason why Mr Romney lost key swing states in the mid-West because, in his own incoherent economic strategy, he opposed Mr Obama's vital bail-out of the auto industry.

Indeed, even the Economist - hardly a left-leaning publication - ultimately endorsed Mr Obama for re-election, concluding that Mr Romney's pitch for President was not convincing because it simply did not add up.

Still, though, many Republicans seem to be placing the lion's share of the blame for the defeat on the unfortunate timing of Hurricane Sandy and the chance it offered Mr Obama to look presidential in the last few days of the campaign.

The Republicans should face the truth, and accept that any effect that Sandy could have had on the electoral race would have been negligible.

For, apart from some variation after Mr Obama's poor display in the first debate on 3 October, the polls have been telling us pretty much the same thing for weeks now.

The expectation was that Mr Obama would hold a small lead in the popular vote but that the incumbent was doing better in the majority of battleground states.

And, yet, still the Republicans collectively bury their heads in the sand, and wail and gnash their teeth at even the thought of four more years of Mr Obama.

Now, after the result proved the pollsters to be accurate, there will never be four years of Mr Romney in the White House.

And, in concluding, the defeat for the former Massachusetts governor reminded me of a quote attributed to the 16th President, Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln said: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time. But you cannot fool all of the people, all of the time."

Of course, Mr Romney and the Republicans have tried hard over the last few weeks to disprove Mr Lincoln. In the end, though, the maxim held true.


CLOCKWATCH All times UTC [GMT]
Key (expected results): Democrat Republican Toss-up

12am Polls close in Georgia (16) Indiana (11) Kentucky (8) South Carolina (9) Vermont (3) Virginia (13)
12.30am Polls close in North Carolina (15) Ohio (18) West Virginia (5)
1am Polls close in Alabama (9) Connecticut (7) Delaware (3) District of Columbia (3) Florida (29) Illinois (20) Maine (4) Maryland (10) Massachusetts (11) Mississippi (6) Missouri (10) New Hampshire (4) Oklahoma (7) New Jersey (14) Pennsylvania (20) Rhode Island (4) Tennessee (11)
1.30am Polls close in Arkansas (6)
2am Polls close in Arizona (11) Colorado (9) Kansas (6) Louisiana (8) Michigan (16) Minnesota (10) Nebraska (5) New Mexico (5) New York (29) South Dakota (3) Texas (38) Wisconsin (10) Wyoming (3)
3am Polls closed in Iowa (6) Montana (3) Nevada (6) North Dakota (3) Utah (6)
After 4am Polls closed in Alaska (3) (5am) California (55) Hawaii (4) Idaho (4) Oregon (7) Washington (12)