2012 Presidential Election

The policies of the Obama administration had led to controversial policies on the economy and healthcare that dominated the next election. Instead of nominating a radical opponent, the Republican party chose a moderate candidate who had developed some policies similar to his opponent. How did the challenger to a popular incumbent struggle to define himself in this competitive presidential election of 2012?

Fig.1 - Obama Campaign Rally

2012 Presidential Election Candidates

Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney were the 2012 significant parties' presidential candidates. Minor parties such as the Green Party with Jill Stein and the Libertarian Party with Gary Johnson also ran candidates, but none received more than 1% of the popular vote. Both major candidates were veterans of the 2008 election, Romney had lost the Republican primary to John McCain, and Obama had won the presidency for the Democratic Party.

Fig.2 - Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Barack Obama and his running mate, Vice President Joe Biden, were the incumbents in the 2012 election. They were first elected in 2008, receiving almost 53% of the popular vote. Obama entered office with a high 67% approval rating in January 2009 that continued to slide before bottoming out at 41% in the fall of 2011 and rebounding to 53% by the 2012 elections, according to Gallup Polls.

Democratic Primary

Although he carried a decisive 88.9% of the Democratic primary vote, he still faced challengers on specific issues. Compared to his three immediate predecessors, his incumbent primary vote was more decisive than George H. W. Bush, very close to that of Bill Clinton, but not as strong as George W. Bush. In West Virginia, a man named Keith Judd, who had been in prison since 1999 for mailing threatening material, received 41% of the primary vote in what has been viewed as a protest vote against Obama's environmental policies by voters in a state with a large coal industry. Another challenger running on banking and economic issues, John Wolfe Jr., won 42% in Arkansas, 12% in Louisiana, and 5% in Texas. Conspiracy theories that Obama was not born in the United States but instead was born in Kenya persisted. However, their promoters' attempts to remove him from the ballot as ineligible failed.

Fig.3 - Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney

Republican Primary

Unlike Obama, Romney faced considerable challenges for the Republican presidential nomination. Republicans such as Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachman, and Rick Perry all at various times beat Romney in state primaries or polls. Still, by the end of April 2012, Romney had emerged as the clear front-runner. Attacks against Romney, who had presented himself as a centrist to voters in Massachusetts when running for governor, primarily focused on his having changed positions on issues and being too moderate. Many of his conservative challengers attacked the Massachusetts healthcare plan, which they called "Romneycare", as being similar to Obamacare, which was deeply unpopular with conservatives.

Fig.4 - Obama Explains Affordable Care Act

2012 Election Issues

The 2012 Election featured several hotly debated issues. These included the Great Recession, the Affordable Care Act, and foreign policy. Many Republicans had accused Romney of being too moderate in the primaries. Later in the presidential race, Romney struggled to significantly differentiate himself from Obama on foreign policy and healthcare issues.

Affordable Care Act

In 2010 the Affordable Care Act, also known as "Obamacare," was passed. The Act massively expanded access to health insurance coverage through new taxes, Medicaid reform, and the mandate that individuals purchase health insurance or pay an additional tax.

Conservatives vehemently opposed the law as raising taxes, creating too much government interference in private health matters, and being disruptive to private insurance plans. As many conservatives did not like the state health coverage Romney introduced in Massachusetts, Romney tried to draw a line between the two by criticizing Obamacare. He stated that his plan differed in that it was created bipartisanly, did not raise taxes, and did not interfere with what treatments patients could choose.

Great Recession

The Great Recession of 2007-2009 was an economic downturn resulting from the burst of the U.S. housing market, leading to a banking crisis when many mortgages could no longer be paid. In his first year, Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, approving $787 billion to bail out the financial system, and ultimately spent $831 billion. This was an attempt to boost the economy out of the recession.

Republicans largely opposed the act because they felt that bureaucracy would be inefficient in dealing with the crisis. In a controversial speech, Romney claimed that 47% of Americans paid no taxes and were dependent on government handouts because, he later stated, the government focused on stimulus money instead of creating good jobs. Since the Act was passed, no analysis has been able to concretely determine the effect of the act on restoring the economy. Still, the actual upturn with the Act was higher and faster than most predictions without the Act had guessed it would be.

Foreign Policy

On foreign policy, Obama and Romney were notable for having similar views yet finding nuances on which to attack each other. Romney accused Obama of apologizing for American beliefs to middle eastern leaders. Both men opposed Iran, but Romney criticized Obama as being silent when he should have actively supported the protest movement that erupted in Iran in 2009. One of the most significant distinctions was Romney's assertion that Americas greatest foreign adversary was Russia. At the time, Democrats lampooned the idea as out of date and absurd, as Russia had become a cooperative ally.

Fig.5 - Romney and Obama Post-Election Handshake

2012 Presidential Election Poll

Polls throughout the Fall of 2012 showed noticeable gains for Romney from September to Election Day. He began between 38% to 45%, depending on the poll, to Obama's 46% to 50%. By October, some polls showed a slight Romney lead, as high as 47% for Romney to 44% for Obama in a mid-October Reuters poll. On election day, polls showed Obama just on top of Romney again, with the Pew Research center calling the race "dead even."

2012 Presidential Election Results

The 2012 election occurred on November 6, with Barack Obama winning. The Romney campaign was shocked by the loss, despite some polling that Obama was ahead. After the campaign, Romney blamed the loss on "financial gifts" to minorities from Obama administration policies. These remarks led to criticism of Romney from Republican leaders, who felt that his remarks would alienate minority voters whom their policies would help.

2012 Presidential Election Map

The map below shows the state's electoral votes won by Barrack Obama, in blue, and Mitt Romney, in red.

Fig.6 - 2012 US Presidential Election Results