Obama won 51 percent of the popular vote in a race that was not as close as many people had expected. Barack Obama has been elected to a second term in office after defeating challenger Mitt Romney by 126 Electoral votes Tuesday.
Obama carried several of the key battleground states, including Ohio, Virginia and Florida which contributed to his victory by securing a large number of Electoral votes. The Romney campaign was hoping to win Ohio, as no Republican presidential candidate has ever lost the state and gone on to win an election.
In his 20-minute acceptance speech, delivered in front of an enthusiastic crowd of supporters in Chicago, Obama said that the task of protecting our Union moves forward. “We are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people,” Obama said.
“We know in our hearts that for the United States of America, the best is yet to come.” Obama congratulated Mitt Romney and his family on a hard-fought campaign and thanked him for dedicating his life to a career in public service. He also said that he looked forward to sitting down with Mitt Romney in weeks to come to engage in dialogue about how to move the country forward.
“Elections matter,” Obama said. “Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated. We have our own opinions. Each of us has deeply held beliefs. These arguments we have are a mark of our liberty and we can never forget that as we speak, people in distant nations are risking their lives just for a chance to argue about the issues that matter, the chance to cast their ballots like we did today.”
“I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggest. We are not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states,” Obama said. “We are, and forever will be, the United States of America.”
Obama said that he will return to the White House more determined and more inspired than ever. He went on to say that he is looking forward to reaching out and working with the leaders of both parties.
The inability of Congress to work together over the past few years has left Congressional approval ratings low, a Gallup poll released in August shows that only 10 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. In congressional elections, Republicans retained control of the House of Representatives while Democrats retained control of the Senate after gaining two seats.
