Who Voted: Obama bets electorate matches 2008... and wins

The Associated Press

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President Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Biden and Jill Biden wave at his election-night rally Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2012, in Chicago. Obama defeated Republican challenger former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

 

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Barack Obama and Mitt Romney made sharply different bets about who would vote this year.

It turned out that Americans who cast ballots looked collectively much more like what Obama had envisioned - a diverse tapestry that reflected a changing America - than the whiter, older electorate that Romney had banked on.

Younger voters and minorities voted at levels not far off from the historic coalition Obama assembled in 2008. Republicans who banked on a more monolithic voting body sending them to the White House were caught off-guard.

The outcome revealed a stark problem for Republicans: If they don't broaden their tent, they won't move forward.

And it foreshadowed changes over the next generation that could put long-held Republican states onto the political battleground maps of the future.