Last night, in a close election, President Obama won the right to occupy the Oval Office for another four years.
Obama won the popular vote and won the electoral vote as well. 303 electoral votes were cast in Obama's favor to Mitt Romney's 206. President Obama won several of the Battleground states including Ohio, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Virginia. The only swing state that voted Romney was North Carolina.
It wasn't an easy victory though. Many states were split pretty evenly. In Florida Obama won the popular vote but with a narrow margin, 49.9% to Romney's 49.3%.
The East Coast and many of the states hit by Hurricane Sandy were more decisive. New York voted in Obama 62.7% to 35.9% and in New Jersey 57.9% to 41.0%. They weren't the only East Coast states to vote Obama. Romney trailed Obama in Massachusetts, the state that elected him Governor, 60.8% to 37.6%. According to Smart Politics, Romney suffered the second worst home-state defeat in history. Second only to John Fremont of California, one of the first Republicans and a presidential candidate in 1856.
The Senate race has bombarded Ohioans with advertisements non-stop since election season began. Sherrod Brown managed to keep his seat over challenger Josh Mandel with a 50.3% lead to Mandel's 45.1%. Obama will start his next four years with a Democrat majority in the Senate. The House of Representatives will be a Republican majority. All but four of Ohio's sixteen seats voted in Republican candidates.
The official Inauguration Day, January 20, 2013, falls on a Sunday so the public swearing-in ceremony will be held January 21, 2013.
For more information on election results, including state-by-state results, check out http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/2012/results.
