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How Many Republicans Voted For Obama In 2012

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Electoral College Changes And Controversies

How Obama Won: Election 2012 Breakdown

Population changes indicated by the 2010 U.S. Census changed the apportionment of votes in the Electoral College, potentially altering the allocation of votes among swing states. Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Washington gained votes; conversely, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania lost votes. The change in electoral allotment shifts the allocation of votes across the Democratic-Republican divide; pundits predicted the Democratic Party would lose electoral votes in states previously won in the past three presidential elections, and the Republican Party would gain votes in states won by Republican candidates in the last three elections.

Some states enacted new electoral laws in 2011. For example, Florida and Iowa banned felons from voting, and various states shortened their voting periods, eliminating the option of early voting. These measures were criticized as strategies to impede certain groups of voters, including college students, African Americans, and Latinx Americans.

Barack Obama: Incumbent President Barack Obama was the Democratic candidate for the 2012 presidential election. On November 6th, 2012, Obama was re-elected President for a second term.

Republicans Most Often Mention Romney Palin As Preferred Candidate

PRINCETON, NJ — Registered voters are about equally divided as to whether they would more likely vote to re-elect Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, or vote for the Republican candidate.


These results are based on a Feb. 1-3 Gallup poll. Forty-four percent of U.S. registered voters say they are more likely to vote for Obama, 42% for the Republican candidate, and the remaining 14% are undecided or would vote for another candidate.

“It is clear at this early date that most Republicans have not developed a preference, with 42% not having an opinion or volunteering that they do not prefer any candidate.”

A year into his first term as president, Obama’s approval ratings are hovering around 50%. The 50% approval figure has been a strong predictor of an incumbent president’s re-election: presidents who averaged 50% or better from January of an election year through Election Day have all been re-elected. This includes George W. Bush, who averaged 51% in 2004, though his approval rating was 48% in Gallup’s final pre-election poll.

The re-election question pits Obama against an unnamed Republican candidate. Several prominent Republicans have already visited the early caucus and primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire, and later this year, some may announce their intention to seek the party’s nomination.

Bottom Line

Survey Methods


For results based on the sample of 942 registered voters, the maximum margin of error is ±4 percentage points.

A Note On Terminology

  • The analysis in this report is limited to 12 states. These states are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. Voter survey results from the National Election Pool national exit poll and state exit polls were obtained from CNNs Election 2012 website.
  • Utilizing the National Exit Poll to estimate the share of the electorate that is Hispanic generally produces an estimate that is higher than that observed in the Census Bureaus November voting supplement of the Current Population Survey . In 2008, according to the National Exit Poll, 9% of voters were of Hispanic origin . However, according to the 2008 November CPS, 7.4% of voters were Hispanic . Estimates of the Hispanic share of the electorate for 2012 from the 2012 November CPS will not be available until 2013. For more details on the issues associated with using these data sources to estimate the share of the electorate that is Hispanic, see Hispanics and the 2004 Election: Population, Electorate and Voters by Roberto Suro, Richard Fry and Jeffrey Passel.
  • United States Presidential Election

    2012 United States presidential election
    51.1% 47.2%
    President before election

    The 2012 United States presidential election was the 57th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. Incumbent DemocraticPresidentBarack Obama and his running mate, incumbent Vice PresidentJoe Biden, were re-elected to a second term. They defeated the Republican ticket of businessman and former GovernorMitt Romney of Massachusetts and RepresentativePaul Ryan of Wisconsin.

    As the incumbent president, Obama secured the Democratic nomination without serious opposition. The Republicans experienced a competitive primary. Romney was consistently competitive in the polls and won the support of many party leaders, but he faced challenges from a number of more conservative contenders. Romney secured his party’s nomination in May, defeating former Senator Rick Santorum, former Speaker of the HouseNewt Gingrich, and Texas congressman Ron Paul, among other candidates.

    This was the first election in which a major party nominee lost his home state since Al Gore lost Tennessee in 2000, as Mitt Romney lost his home state of Massachusetts.

    Why Obama Won The Women’s Vote

    US Elections: November 8th and Beyond

    In the very long list of people who, in what might come to be seen as the most impressive achievement of his campaign, Mitt Romney managed to alienate , the biggest and most damaging group by far was women.


    As the results came in, while we had to wait late and long for the final verdict endure Karl Rove’s 11th-hour meltdown; enjoy Diane Sawyer’s awesome, possibly mini-bar-assisted close of show banter and louche upper-body sway it was clear from relatively early on that while the Latino vote came out solidly for Obama, it was women, particularly single women, who made themselves most decisively heard.

    This shouldn’t have been surprising. The Obama campaign had hammered away at Romney’s record on women in pointed campaign ads from way back, targeting the customary staples Romney’s opposition to Roe v Wade, abortion under any circumstance and insurance coverage for contraception so comprehensively that the danger became one of reduced impact through overexposure.

    There was no romance; it was a question not of hope but of duty, giving voting queues in the city a muted, slightly martyred air. . Those waiting wanted to get the job done, a sober ethos they hoped Obama would take with him into his second term.

    “For healthcare and child services for people in need; for people like me, the poor and the middle class. If Romney wins, it’ll be all about the upper tier.”

    She grinned. “Hell, no.”


    As Obama said on the stump: “Don’t boo; vote. Voting is the best revenge!”

    How Many Republicans Voted For Obamacare

    The Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare, received no Republican votes in either the Senate or the House of Representatives when it was passed in 2009. In the Senate, the bill was passed with a total of 60 votes, or 58 Democratic Party votes and 2 Independent Party votes. The House passed the legislation with 219 Democratic votes.

    The Affordable Care Act received 39 votes against it in the Senate, all from Republicans. One senator abstained from voting. In the House, the ACA received 212 votes against it, with 34 coming from the Democratic Party and 178 from the Republican Party. There were enough votes for the ACA in the Senate to prevent an attempt to filibuster the bill, while the House vote required a simple majority.

    The ACA originated in the Senate, though both the House and Senate were working on versions of a health care bill at the same time. Democrats in the House of Representatives were initially unhappy with the ACA, as they had expected some ability to negotiate additional changes before its passage. Since Republicans in the Senate were threatening to filibuster any bill they did not fully support, and Democrats no longer had enough seats to override the filibuster, no changes could be made. Since any changes to the legislation by the House would require it to be re-evaluated in the Senate, the original version was passed in 2009 on condition that it would be amended by a subsequent bill.

    Who Really Voted In 2016

    The national story

    Exit polls indicated that the voting electorate in 2016 was 71 percent white, 12 percent black, 11 percent Latino, and 7 percent Asian or other race. Compared to 2012, the share of white voters dropped by a percentage point, as did the share of black voters. The vote share of Latinos increased by a point and the vote share of Asians and all other racial minorities increased by 2 points.


    Our estimates tell a significantly different story about the racial/ethnic distribution of voters. The most salient difference here is that the exit polls underestimated the share of white voters and overestimated the share of voters of color. Our estimate is that 73.7 percent of voters were white , 8.9 percent were Latino , and 5.5 percent were Asian or other race . However, our figures agree with the exit polls on the percent of black voters .

    As for shifts from 2012, our data show that the white vote share declined by only 0.3 percentage points in 2016. We found that the black vote share declined by 1.1 points, which mirrors the exit poll results, while the Latino vote share increased by 0.9 points and the vote share of Asians or other races increased by 0.5 points. So, other than shifts in the black vote share, we generally found less change in the racial/ethnic structure of the voting electorate between the two elections.

    The story in the states

    Well start with the trio of Rust Belt statesMichigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsinthat were decisive to Trumps victory.

    Presidential Election Results: How Obama Beat Romney

    • Dec 20, 2016 at 2:15pm

    President Barack Obama beat former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in the 2012 Presidential election.

    The 2012 Presidential Election saw President Barack Obama win re-election against former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, with 332 electoral votes and 51.1 percent of the popular vote. Obama became the third-consecutive president to win a second term, the first time that happened since 1820.


    The 2012 results looked similar to 2008, as only two states switched parties. In 2008, Obama won North Carolina and Indiana, but they both went for Romney in 2012. Also in 2008, Obama won Nebraskas second Congressional district, but he lost that vote in 2012.

    The 2012 Electoral College results.

    In the 2012 election, Romney easily beat Obama among men, 52-45 percent, notes Roper Center statistics. However, men made up 47 percent of the electorate and Obama won Women 55-44 percent.

    Obama also succeeded among minority groups. He won 93 percent of the African-American vote, as well as 71 percent of the Hispanic vote. Hispanic voters made up 10 percent of the 2012 electorate, and that is expected to grow in the 2016 election.

    The 2012 election also showed massive division between the political parties, as only a few voted for the other partys candidate. Ninety-two percent of Democrats voted for Obama, while 93 percent of Republicans voted for Romney.


    Voter Analysis Shows Obama Would Have Lost In 2012 If Black Turnout Had Mirrored 2008

    Can Republicans Recover After Big Loss to President Obama?

    President Obama.

    WASHINGTON America’s blacks voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time, reflecting a deeply polarized presidential election in which blacks strongly supported Barack Obama while many whites stayed home.

    Had people voted last November at the same rates they did in 2004, when black turnout was below its current historic levels, Republican Mitt Romney would have won narrowly, according to an analysis conducted for The Associated Press.

    Census data and exit polling show that whites and blacks will remain the two largest racial groups of eligible voters for the next decade. Last year’s heavy black turnout came despite concerns about the effect of new voter-identification laws on minority voting, outweighed by the desire to re-elect the first black president.

    William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, analyzed the 2012 elections for the AP using census data on eligible voters and turnout, along with November’s exit polling. He estimated total votes for Obama and Romney under a scenario where 2012 turnout rates for all racial groups matched those in 2004. Overall, 2012 voter turnout was roughly 58 percent, down from 62 percent in 2008 and 60 percent in 2004.


    Overall, the findings represent a tipping point for blacks, who for much of America’s history were disenfranchised and then effectively barred from voting until passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

    Census: Blacks Voted At Higher Rates Than Whites In 2012

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    The 2012 election produced another demographic milestone in the changing face of the nation as African Americans voted at a higher rate than whites for the first time, according to a Census Bureau report released Wednesday.

    The report provided fresh evidence of how higher turnout rates among African Americans and a rapidly growing Hispanic population continue to reshape the electorate in presidential elections, with broad implications for the competition between the Republican and Democratic parties.

    The report found that both blacks and Hispanics voted in higher raw numbers in 2012 than in 2008, helping to propel President Obama to a reelection victory over Republican Mitt Romney. The total number of white voters actually decreased between 2008 and 2012, the first such drop by any group within the population since the bureau started to issue such statistics in 1996.


    Changing demographics continue to shrink the white share of the overall electorate in presidential years. Between 1996 and 2012, the white share of the total electorate has declined from almost 83 percent to 74 percent, according to the report, which is based on a post-election survey.

    These demographic shifts have given Democrats an advantage over Republicans in presidential elections due to the GOPs heavy dependence on white voters and the Democrats success in capturing sizable majorities among blacks, Hispanics and Asian Americans.

    Carol Morello contributed to this report.

    Reminder: Obamacare Passed Without A Single Republican Vote

    Back in 2009 and 2010, Democrats controlled the White House and the U.S. House and U.S. Senate. President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rammed Obamacare through without a single Republican vote.

    The Washington Post said of the Obamacare fight at the time It has inflamed the partisanship that Obama pledged to tame when he campaigned for the White House and has limited Congresss ability to pass any other major legislation.

    In December 2009, the U.S. Senate voted 60 to 39 for Obamacare. The Washington Post reported The Senate bill passed without a single GOP vote.

    In March 2010, the U.S. House voted 219 to 212 for Obamacare. 34 House Democrats and all of the House Republicans voted against Obamacare. The NO votes were the only bipartisan votes.

    President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on March 23, 2010.

    President Obama embraces HHS Sec Kathleen Sebelius and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after signing the health insurance reform bill, March 23, 2010.

    Democrats ignored the plans offered by Republicans at the time including the House GOP plan drafted by Rep. Tom Price and The Patients Choice Act of 2009introduced by U.S. Senators Tom Coburn, M.D. and Richard Burr and U.S. Representatives Paul Ryan and Devin Nunes .

    Trump Wants 10 Gop Lawmakers Gone This One May Prove Tricky

    As to other lessons from the preliminary exit poll data, its clear that Hispanics are quickly becoming a political force that national politicians must acknowledge. They increased their share of the electorate by about three percentage points; at that pace, theyll tie or pass African-Americans as the largest minority voting bloc in 2016.

    The Hispanic vote helped produce the dead heat in Florida, for instance. Thats a state Romney needed to win to have plausible paths to 270 electoral votes, and he could reasonably have expected to do well among the states conservative Cuban-heritage population. But Obama performed three percentage points better among Floridas Hispanics than he did in 2008, winning 60 percent of their votes. If he emerges as the winner there, that will be a big reason.

    Winning the independent vote also no longer appears to be as important as it once seemed. Romney led Obama among self-described independents, 50 percent to 45 percent. Thats a turnaround from four years ago, when Obama won them, 52 percent to 44 percent.

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    But independents, like whites, were a slightly smaller share of the electorate in 2012. And a declaration of independence is not necessarily indicative of a voters ideology. Obama won self-declared moderates, 56 percent to 41 percent. Obama also took 86 percent of the liberal vote, while Romney won 82 percent of conservatives.

    Reality Check: Who Voted For Donald Trump

    AM1111 blog 2012 SPARK: My View of The 2012 Presidential ...

    Donald Trump has beaten Hillary Clinton in the race to be president of the United States.

    Much of the narrative ahead of the election had been that Mr Trump was supported by angry, white men. To get an insight into which groups actually voted for him, you can look at the exit poll conducted across the country by Edison Research for the National Election Pool, a consortium of ABC News, The Associated Press, CBS News, , Fox News and NBC News.

    It is very difficult to get a genuinely representative sample of how more than 120 million people have voted. It is a big survey – of almost 25,000 voters – and they are the best figures available, but they should be used with caution.

    It throws up some odd results, such as that 10% of people who support the idea of a wall along the Mexican border nonetheless voted for Mrs Clinton, while 5% of people who thought the next president should continue the policies of Barack Obama voted for Mr Trump.

    Bear in mind that the proportions are unlikely to add up to 100%, because not everybody answered all the questions and there were other candidates standing in the election, who received about 5% of the votes.

    The poll suggests that 53% of men voted for Mr Trump, with 41% voting for Mrs Clinton – those proportions are almost exactly reversed for women.

    Looking specifically at white women, they favoured Mr Trump, with 53% supporting him compared with 43% for Mrs Clinton.

    They Voted For Obama Then Went For Trump Can Democrats Win Them Back

    • May 4, 2018

    RITTMAN, Ohio In the daily race that is her life, Sharla Baker does not think about politics very much.

    She rises early, drives to the gas station to buy coffee, feeds her baby, dresses her two other children, ages 3 and 2, and hustles them all off to day care. By 9:30 a.m. she pulls into a hair salon 45 minutes away, where she is training to be a cosmetologist. She waxes and cuts all day long, making only the money she earns in tips, which on a recent day last month was $8.41.

    But Ms. Baker does vote. She picked Barack Obama for president in 2008 and 2012. He seemed sincere and looked like a happy family man. But most important, he was a Democrat. Her great-grandmother, who grew up poor in Pennsylvania, always said that Democrats look out for the poor people.

    In 2016, though, she voted for Donald J. Trump. Yes, he was rich and seemed mean on his TV show, The Apprentice. But she liked how he talked about jobs and wages and people being left out of the economy.

    Now, more than a year later, she is wavering.

    I voted for Trump because I wanted some change going on, said Ms. Baker, 28. But then again, maybe hes going to do the wrong change.

    The swing of Obama voters to Mr. Trump proved a decisive factor in the 2016 presidential election. Of the more than 650 counties that chose Mr. Obama twice, about a third flipped to Mr. Trump. Many were in states critical to Mr. Trumps win, like Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.

    A Closer Look At Older Americans

    The vast majority of Americans who are 65 and older are members of the Silent generation . They came of age in the Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy years. Silents favored the Democrats at times during the 1990s, but in recent elections have strongly supported the Republicans. While they aligned more with the Democrats in the 1990s, they have become much more Republican in recent years. The Silent generation replaced the Greatest generation, who were more reliable Democratic voters when they constituted the bulk of the senior vote.

    Silents increasingly call themselves conservative and they hold the most consistently conservative views about government, social issues and Americas place in the world. Unlike other generations that in recent years have become more supportive of smaller government, they have held conservative views about government for years.

    Today, an overwhelming majority of Silents are either angry or frustrated with government. They are the generation that is most strongly disapproving of Barack Obama, for whom a majority did not vote. Silents also are the most politically energized generation, as they demonstrated in the 2010 midterms.

    More often than the younger generations, Silents take the American exceptionalist view that the United States is the greatest nation in the world. But fewer older people than young people think that Americas best days are ahead of us.

    The Rise Of Black Lives Matter

    Black Lives Matter is an activist movement originating in the African-American community that campaigns against violence and institutionalized racism toward black people in the United States. BLM regularly organizes protests around the deaths of black people in killings by law enforcement officers, as well as broader issues of racial profiling, police brutality, and racial inequality in the United States criminal justice system.

    The movement began in 2013 with the use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin. Black Lives Matter became nationally recognized for its street demonstrations following the 2014 police shooting deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City.

    Cooperative Congressional Election Study

    Virginia Republicans for Obama

    The CCES found similar shares of Obama-Trump and Romney-Clinton voters compared to the ANES, at least as a percentage of all 2016 voters. In the case of the former, the CCES found 5% of all 2016 voters backed Obama in 2012 but Trump in 2016, and like the ANES 2% voted for Romney in 2012 and Clinton in 2016.

    Breaking down each candidates base of support by 2012 vote, the CCES data found that about 11% of Trumps voters backed Obama in 2012, while only 4% of Clintons support came from voters who voted for Romney in 2012. The percentage data for 2012 and 2016 voting are laid out below in Table 2.

    Just How Many Obama 2012

    Using different surveys to try to answer an oft-asked question

    In the immediate aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, many observers understandably focused on the numerous places that swung from Barack Obama to Donald Trump. Because many of these areas congregated in swing states within the Rust Belt and Midwest, they played a pivotal role in Trumps victory, as shown by the movement toward the GOP in Map 1 below. But how many total voters really switched from Obama to Trump in 2016? Different data sources tell a different story, but the answer is certainly in the millions.

    Reelection And Political Gridlock

    Discontent over Democratic President Obamas Affordable Care Act helped the Republicans capture the majority in the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections. It also helped spawn the Tea Party, a conservative movement that emerged from the right wing of the Republican Party and pulled the traditional conservative base further to the right. The Tea Party, which was strongly opposed to abortion, gun control, and immigration, focused primarily on limiting government spending and the size of the federal government.

    Obama won reelection in 2012, but the Republicans retained their hold on the House of Representatives, and the Democratic majority in the Senate grew razor-thin. Political bickering and intractable Republican resistanceincluding a 70% increase in filibusters over the 1980s, a refusal to allow a vote on some legislation, and the glacial pace at which the Senate confirmed the Presidents judicial nominationscreated political gridlock in Washington, interfering with Obamas ability to secure any important legislative victories.

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