The results of the 2012 presidential election are in. President Barack Obama will continue his presidency into a second term as he reached the necessary 270 electoral votes to win the election. Millions of Americans kept track of the electoral college map as they watched the two candidates claim the electoral votes for each state.
In the final results of the election, President Obama took 303 electoral votes and Governor Mitt Romney had 206 electoral votes. According to Politico, President Obama also won the popular vote with 60,048,603 Popular Votes as of 12 p.m. Romney had 57,369,638 Popular Votes. The popular votes are still being counted, so they will change.
Many expected that the winner wouldn't be determined until late in the night or would continue into Wednesday, November 7, but citizens of the United States found out who the winner was pretty early on in the night.
In some electoral college map projections, there were several states that were considered as a toss-up and the votes could have gone either way. These states included Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida and New Hampshire.
President Obama went on to take a majority of these states. He won in Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Virginia Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. He may have also won Florida, but the votes are still being processed.
The victory in Ohio, with 18 electoral votes, put Obama in the lead after much of the election was at a tie. California's 55 electoral votes gave him a huge lead when the final electoral vote count came in.Romney took the 15 electoral votes in North Carolina.
After his success, Obama gave a speech to thank those who voted for him.
"Tonight, in this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back, and we know in our hearts that for the United States of America, the best is yet to come," Obama said, according to WPTV.
