With an election nigh, everyone tells you to start your path towards the poll. They say listen to the candidates. Perhaps a "debate" is your moment. If, however, you depend on presidential aspirants for instruction you are already in trouble. When the candidates speak you first need to identify what language is being spoken. Across the spectrum from deficit , unemployment , voucher , and tax to honor , rape , and family , every key word operates within several ordinary versions of the political vernacular.
If you're speaking Red you hear one thing, Blue another. In this criss-crossed world, power seekers seek words that reinforce the illusion of agreement. While agreement obviates choice, the illusion of agreement makes choice both more urgent and more difficult. You are a normal person making a choice, and so of course you will be drawn by hammering appeals to your high opinion of yourself. Thus duped, the small "d" democrat may come to believe that all this hubbub is significant only if he or she gets to determine the meaning of the key words and to dictate the winner of the election.
This is, of course, a stunning miscalculation. Elections and the political language in which they are conducted are profoundly impersonal and -- remember Alice in Wonderland? Elections are collective things, although not the way markets are another common, deliberate, and false analogy. Elections are impersonal and collective because the realization of even the most trivial presidential program depends on how the fabric of national energies is mobilized. Your vote becomes a power not when you mark the ballot, not when the president swears his oath, but as all voters revert to citizens and life takes its next multiple and chaotic steps down your and our altered path.
Going into the election and coming out of it, nearly anyone can mislead you. Every day those with real or imagined stakes in the game will gleefully call black white, hate love, Cain Abel. The far-reaching opportunities and the big opportunists, however, work best with elements that establish the context, the situation, and the relevance of what is said. These elements are the frames of language.
They can be used in similarly deceptive ways. When, for example, a candidate declares that on election day "the choice is yours " -- it is obviously not yours , it is ours -- that statement filters into our beliefs, those beliefs inform our political activities, infusing them with this meaning rather than that.
A slight shift in the framing of language can change the public effect of your behavior. Politics is like that. Framing matters even more for another reason.
It is a registry of shared symbols and connotations. That is what makes every person's speech -- even as it comes out of Mitt's or Barack's or Ronald's or George's individual mouth -- a collective fact. Frames further infuse those facts with motives, motives that take over where action precedes or surpasses our individual control. If you need an example of this, consider some specific inequality between two persons; measure it with a yardstick or microscope and the stage set is inert; see, by contrast, inequality in the light of rights or property or dignity or advantage or numerous other frames and the scene comes alive; each angle of view makes that inequality a problem for us in a different way; the frame suggests or even imposes its own set of motives.
Bachmann withdrew after finishing sixth in the Iowa caucuses, [32] Huntsman withdrew after coming in third in New Hampshire, and Perry withdrew when polls showed him drawing low numbers in South Carolina. Santorum, who had previously run an essentially one-state campaign in Iowa, was able to organize a national campaign after his surprising victory there. He unexpectedly carried three states in a row on February 7 and overtook Romney in nationwide opinion polls, becoming the only candidate in the race to effectively challenge the notion that Romney was the inevitable nominee.
The Super Tuesday primaries took place on March 6. Romney carried six states, Santorum carried three, and Gingrich won only in his home state of Georgia. Santorum won Kansas and three Southern primaries, but he was unable to make any substantial gain on Romney, who became a formidable frontrunner after securing more than half of the delegates allocated in March. On April 10, Santorum suspended his campaign due to a variety of reasons, such as a low delegate count, unfavorable polls in his home state of Pennsylvania, and his daughter's health, leaving Mitt Romney as the undisputed front-runner for the presidential nomination and allowing Gingrich to claim that he was "the last conservative standing" in the campaign for the nomination.
On May 29, after winning the Texas primary, Romney had received a sufficient number of delegates to clinch the party's nomination with the inclusion of unpledged delegates. After winning the June 5 primaries in California and several other states, Romney had received more than enough pledged delegates to clinch the nomination without counting unpledged delegates, making the June 26 Utah Primary, the last contest of the cycle, purely symbolic.
CNN's final delegate estimate, released on July 27, , put Romney at 1, pledged delegates and 62 unpledged delegates, for a total estimate of 1, delegates. No other candidate had unpledged delegates. The delegate estimates for the other candidates were Santorum at delegates, Paul at , Gingrich at , Bachmann at 1, Huntsman at 1, and all others at 0.
On August 28, , delegates at the Republican National Convention officially named Romney the party's presidential nominee. Four other parties nominated candidates that had ballot access or write-in access to at least electoral votes, the minimum number of votes needed in the election to win the presidency through a majority of the electoral college. The United States presidential election of broke new records in financing, fundraising, and negative campaigning.
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The Commission on Presidential Debates held four debates during the last weeks of the campaign: The major issues debated were the economy and jobs, the federal budget deficit, taxation and spending, the future of Social Security , Medicare , and Medicaid , healthcare reform , education, social issues, immigration, and foreign policy. An independent presidential debate featuring minor party candidates took place on Tuesday, October 23 at the Hilton Hotel in Chicago , Illinois. Popular vote totals are from the official Federal Election Commission report.
The results of the electoral vote were certified by Congress on January 4, The table below displays the official vote tallies by each state's Electoral College voting method. The source for the results of all states, except those that amended their official results, is the official Federal Election Commission report.
The column labeled "Margin" shows Obama's margin of victory over Romney the margin is negative for every state that Romney won. In the election, all four of Maine's electoral votes were won by Obama and all five of Nebraska's electoral votes were won by Romney. The following table records the official presidential vote tallies for Maine and Nebraska's congressional districts.
Red denotes states or congressional districts that contribute an electoral vote won by Republican Mitt Romney; blue denotes those won by Democrat Barack Obama. After the networks called Ohio the state that was arguably the most critical for Romney, as no Republican has ever won the Presidency without carrying it for Obama at around Despite public polling showing Romney behind Obama in the swing states of Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, and New Hampshire, tied with Obama in Virginia, and just barely ahead of Obama in Florida, the Romney campaign said they were genuinely surprised by the loss, having believed that public polling was oversampling Democrats.
On November 30, , it was revealed that shortly before the election, internal polling done by the Romney campaign had shown Romney ahead in Colorado and New Hampshire, tied in Iowa, and within a few points of Obama in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Ohio. Foreign leaders reacted with both positive and mixed messages. Most world leaders congratulated and praised Barack Obama on his re-election victory.
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However, Venezuela and some other states had tempered reactions. Pakistan commented that Romney's defeat had made Pakistan-United States relations safer. Combined with the re-elections of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush , Obama's victory in the election marked only the second time in American history that three consecutive presidents were each elected to two or more full terms the first time being the consecutive two-term presidencies of Thomas Jefferson , James Madison , and James Monroe. The election marked the first time since Franklin D.
Roosevelt 's last two re-elections in and that a Democratic presidential candidate won a majority of the popular vote in two consecutive elections. Romney lost his home state of Massachusetts , becoming the first major party presidential candidate to lose his home state since Democrat Al Gore lost his home state of Tennessee to Republican George W. Bush in the election.
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Utah, Oklahoma, and West Virginia; Obama did so in four states: Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Hawaii. Romney's loss prompted the Republican National Committee to try to appeal to the American Latino population by concentrating on different approaches to immigration. These were short-lived due to activity and anger from the Republican base and may have contributed to the selection of Donald Trump as their presidential candidate four years later.
Gary Johnson 's popular vote total set a Libertarian Party record, and his popular vote percentage was the second-best showing for a Libertarian in a presidential election, trailing only Ed Clark 's in At the time, Green Party candidate Jill Stein 's popular vote total made her the most successful female presidential candidate in a general election in United States history.
Obama's vote total was the second most votes received in the history of presidential elections and the most ever for a reelected president. Obama owns the all-time record for votes in a single election as well in However, Obama also became the first president in American history to be reelected to a second term by smaller margins in every way possible: Compared to his victory in , he won fewer states 28 to 26 , fewer electoral votes to , fewer popular votes As Obama's performance is Washington D.
In , Hillary Clinton's margin of victory in the district exceeded Obama's margin, bringing the district back into the routine of providing unprecedentedly large Democratic victories, making a clear outlier to these trends.
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Blue denotes counties that went to Obama; red denotes counties that went to Romney. Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia had all counties go to Romney. Change in popular vote margins at the county level from the election to the election. Blue denotes counties that voted more Democratic.
Red denotes counties that voted more Republican. Treemap of the popular vote by county, state, and locally predominant recipient. Likewise, red would have been used if Romney won. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For related races, see United States elections. Presidential election results map. Numbers indicate electoral votes allotted to the winner of each state. Libertarian Party candidates primaries nominee convention Green Party primaries nominee convention Constitution Party nominee convention Justice Party nominee Americans Elect All candidates.
Democratic Party presidential primaries, and Democratic National Convention. Representative Ron Paul from Texas campaign. Political consultant and gay rights activist Fred Karger from California. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich , from Georgia campaign. Former Senator Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania campaign.
Former Governor Buddy Roemer of Louisiana campaign. Governor Rick Perry of Texas campaign. Former Ambassador Jon Huntsman , from Utah campaign. Representative Michele Bachmann from Minnesota campaign. Businessman Herman Cain , from Georgia campaign. Representative Thaddeus McCotter from Michigan campaign. Former Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota campaign. United States third party and independent presidential candidates, Barack Obama presidential campaign, ; Mitt Romney presidential campaign, ; Gary Johnson presidential campaign, ; Jill Stein presidential campaign, ; and Virgil Goode presidential campaign, United States presidential election debates, Total — 65,, International reactions to the United States presidential election, Results by state, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote.
Results by county, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote. Results by state and the District of Columbia , scaled by number of Electors per state. Cartogram of the electoral vote results, with each square representing one electoral vote. The Obamas and the Bidens embrace following the television announcement of their victory. United States portal Politics portal s portal. Election Results for the U. Senate and the U. House of Representatives" PDF. Retrieved December 7, Huffington Post Politics blog.
Retrieved October 20, Archived from the original on September 9, The Surprising Reality by Andrew Hacker". The New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on October 9, Retrieved April 10, Retrieved April 12, Retrieved July 5, And the process itself also revealed the longing of one part of the Republican electorate, cultural and religious so-called movement conservatives, to find a validating champion for their views.
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Traditionally, presidential primary campaigns have been won on the ground and in the air. That is, successfully campaigns have depended on turning out the vote of their supporters and gaining those supporters by television and radio ads. Well, if you lack money, organization, name recognition, and widespread support, you could pray for a miracle in the form of free, repeated opportunities to make your case publically in a dramatic high-stakes venue, toe to toe with your better known, better funded, better organized opponents.
Or, to parallel what actually happened, you could pray for a large number, say twenty-seven, televised debates, with a very low entry bar enabling you to take part even if had the support of a miniscule portion of the electorate, in which you could publically audition your candidacy to an extent impossible given your meager organizational, financial resources, not to mention real deficits of leadership ability, policy depth and in some cases decided character flaws.
And in fact their prayers were answered.
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The Republican primary became in effect a marathon series of public debates, in which participants, most of whom had little public recognition or standing, assembled on the same stage, signaling rough equality, and answered questions ranging from the substantive to the absurd.
Given the free publicity and assumptions of candidate parity that magnified most participants' stature, except when like Rick Perry or Herman Cain their actual performance or past histories catastrophically decreased it, there was little incentive to drop out. The rise and demise of the candidates taking part in the debates derby came to follow a predictable path. One candidate would emerge from the pack and make a splash, briefly, before heightened visibility brought more scrutiny, and a fuller less flattering picture of their personal and political limitations and hence their electability.
Michele Bachman was the first to rise and fade. Emblematic of her inflammatory rhetorical style was her assertion, for which there was scant, if any, medical evidence that HPV vaccine might cause mental retardation. Her accusation brought an immediate response from the medical and scientific community asserting that she was simply wrong. Bachmann refused to apologize or back down. As a putative frontrunner, Ms.
Bachmann began to receive more press scrutiny than her candidacy could weather. Her barely concealed, or restrained certainty about her position on any policy subject that came up during the debates led to the worry, at least for this observer, that she was so tightly wound emotionally that a snap under pressure should she gain the White House ought to be considered to be at least a possibility.
Next up was Texas Governor Rick Perry who displayed a natural ease and charm that reflected a long established, and amply rewarded, confidence in his political skills. He got off to a strong start. However, he had not spent a lot of time thinking or preparing for a presidential race , was ambivalent about it, and then decided at the last moment to jump in. At points he seems to withdraw from taking part in the debate , at others he seemed unprepared to respond in any depth on matters of basic importance like what to do about the American economy.
His public low point, however came, when during a debate, he reached for one of his signature rhetorical devices about abolishing three federal agencies and couldn't remember all of them. This seemed both to crystallize and cement the view that that Governor was as they say in Texas, all hat and no cattle. He briefly surged on the basis of a catchy economic phrase that turned out to have been formulated by his personal accountant. It proved to be more of a slogan than a policy. He also proved himself to be remarkably uninformed by vast areas of presidential responsibility in domestic and foreign policy , seeming to welcome a war with Iran because of what he viewed as the superiority of American Aegis warships.
On domestic policy as well, including his own economic plan, he seemed ignorant of important details or its possible economic impact. And before his brief elevation, he seemed just as intent in promoting his new autobiography, as running for office. He was forced to drop out when a thirteen- year affair came to light. He didn't faire much better than he had the first time and for the same reasons.
He came across as smart, knowledgeable, and rhetorically nimble. All of this was in addition to his influence peddling on behalf of Fanny and Freddie Mae a key institution in the explosion of risky home mortgage loans, his record of adultery, and having been on side many sides of so many issues that that finding a consistent core would be difficult, at best.
If rigid best described Michelle Bachman, lightweight best described Herman Cain, more hat than cattle best described Rick Perry, and grandiosity could fairly describe Mr. Gingrich, then angry would have to be the description of choice for Rick Santorum. Santorum like Newt Gingrich proved to be a forceful, knowledgeable and articulate defender of his positions. Gingrich's views were boundlessly expansive, Mr. Santorum's rhetoric was often angry, preachy, and his style acerbic. It's a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.
I'm ready for it. The reporter's quote was accurate and Mr. Santorum then further explained that he meant the remark in the context of health care policy. As one long-time observer of Mr. It's who he is.