Electing the President, 2012

President Barack Obama decisively won reelection to a second term, garnering the popular vote as well as 332 electoral votes to the challenger's 206, but the course of presidential campaigning never did run smooth. Despite a slowly rising stock market and falling unemployment rate, the economic recession provided the Romney campaign with rich opportunities for criticism of Obama's first term. Obama's team countered negative advertising with its own program to discredit Romney's platform, buildin