2012 Presidential Election
The 2012 Presidential Election in the United States saw incumbent President Barack Obama, a Democrat, win re-election against Republican candidate Mitt Romney. The election was marked by debates on economic policies, healthcare, and foreign affairs. President Obama secured a second term in office, while the election highlighted the country's political divisions and the importance of swing states in the electoral process.
6 Key excerpts on "2012 Presidential Election"
eBook - ePubYes We Can?
White Racial Framing and the Obama Presidency
- Adia Harvey-Wingfield, Joe Feagin(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...10 T HE 2012 N ATIONAL E LECTION The final months of the 2012 election campaign for the U.S. presidency were dramatic and revealing in regard to the continuing realities of white racial framing and other aspects of systemic racism and to the persisting weaknesses and strengths of the political system. Republican and Democratic Political Advantages: The 2012 Election From the beginning of the 2012 campaign, many media analysts and other political analysts thought Republican candidate Mitt Romney had certain major advantages. The Republican Party had made decisive political gains in the 2010 midterm elections. Many expected this to continue in 2012. Early in Obama’s presidency, white approval of his performance stood at 61 percent, but by early 2012 his favorability rating was just 37 percent for whites (versus 85 percent for blacks and 55 percent for Latino/as). 1 For months before the November election, analysts speculated that Obama’s low level of white support might cost him the election. 2 In addition, Associated Press (AP) surveys indicated that in 2012 Americans as a group were more likely to express antiblack views than in 2008, a shift suggesting problems for Obama’s re-election. In the 2012 survey, about 60 percent of whites openly (and also implicitly) expressed antiblack views, the highest percentage for any reported racial group. 3 However, in a spring 2012 analysis, Joan Walsh suggested white working-class voters in Midwestern states might be showing regret for previous support of Republicans. Working-class opposition had emerged because of Republican governors trying to reduce labor union rights in states such as Wisconsin and Ohio. 4 By fall 2012, especially in auto industry states such as Ohio and Michigan, Obama’s successful rescue of the auto-industry had become a major issue, with Romney’s opposition to that bailout apparently hurting his chances with some white voters in Midwestern states...
eBook - ePubA Citizen's Guide to U.S. Elections
Empowering Democracy in America
- Costas Panagopoulos, Aaron C. Weinschenk(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...4 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS Every four years, U.S. presidential elections generate considerable media attention, excitement, and debate. Even people who aren’t normally all that interested in politics often become engaged because of all of the “hoopla” surrounding the election. Campaign advertisements fill the airwaves (at least in some places); candidates crisscross the country making campaign stops in many states; pollsters constantly survey the American electorate to learn which candidate is in the lead; and media outlets report on each candidate’s every move. It is hard to avoid politics during presidential election years, especially if one lives in a state that the campaigns view as being “up for grabs.” Given the importance of the presidency in the United States, it is not surprising that presidential elections typically attract higher levels of voter participation than congressional midterm, state, or local elections. Despite the prominence of presidential elections, many Americans find some features of our electoral system to be confusing and, at times, frustrating. In this chapter, we focus on three important aspects of the presidential election process—the selection of candidates, the role of the Electoral College, and the factors that influence election outcomes. The Selection of Presidential Nominees For many people, the most interesting aspect of presidential elections is the candidate pool. Who are the candidates among whom voters will get to choose? Unlike local elections, which often attract candidates with little experience in politics, presidential elections typically draw candidates who have significant previous experience in government as well as national reputations. In the 2012 election, for example, Barack Obama had previously served as a U.S. senator and Mitt Romney had previously served as the governor of Massachusetts and was the runner-up for the Republican nomination in the previous presidential contest in 2008...
eBook - ePubRich Voter, Poor Voter, Red Voter, Blue Voter
Social Class and Voting Behavior in Contemporary America
- Charles Prysby(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Furthermore, both the 2012 and the 2016 presidential elections will be analyzed. These were quite different elections, with very different candidates, so any similarities that we see across these two elections probably will represent more fundamental relationships, not just effects that are specific to the candidates involved. By conducting similar analyses of the vote in 2012 and 2016, we will see the extent to which Romney appealed to working-class and middle-class voters on the same basis that Trump did, as well as seeing the unique appeals of Trump. Many interpretations of the 2016 presidential election stressed Donald Trump’s ability to appeal to white working-class voters, an appeal that other Republicans supposedly lacked. But earlier analysis in this book has shown that Mitt Romney in 2012 also did better among white working-class voters than he did among white middle-class voters, albeit not to the extent that Trump did. While Trump may have been a very unusual Republican presidential candidate, especially regarding the concerns of this book, that cannot be said about Romney. The 2012 Presidential Election was, at least in terms of the issue positions of the candidates, a contest between a fairly typical Democrat and a fairly typical Republican. Moreover, in the 2012 Presidential Election campaign, Romney was characterized by Democrats as a wealthy capitalist who had little understanding of the economic difficulties encountered by ordinary Americans. Those portrayals received considerable media attention, and many voters gave Romney low marks on empathy (Holian and Prysby 2015, 144–145). Romney contributed to these perceptions with some of his own statements during the campaign. Particularly damaging were comments that he made to a group of supporters and that were subsequently widely reported in the national news...
eBook - ePub- Jeffrey C. Alexander(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...The key was symbolizing economics. In 2008, Obama had promised to resolve the Great Recession and to restore America’s economic might. Four years later, this had still not come to pass. Republicans portrayed Obama as a failed hero, a good-hearted flop. The Democrats repositioned Obama as inheriting, not creating, the nation’s current economic mess. When former President Bill Clinton addressed the Democratic nominating convention in August, 2012, he declared that the economic crisis had already begun before the Obama presidency, shouting: “750,000 jobs were lost in January 2008 alone!” No human being could have done any better job, Clinton assured the American citizen-audience, than Obama had managed in the four years since. When, on the day following, President Obama formally accepted his party’s nomination for a second term, he proclaimed that the nation was actually in the middle of an economic recovery, suggesting a new timeline according to which economic redemption would not be fully achieved for years to come, and only if he were elected for a second time. The bounce in the polls that followed the Democratic nominating convention indicated that Obama-character had regained some traction with the center and suggested some refusion with the activist left. Even if Obama could no longer be an avidly romantic hero, he could, at the very least, be represented as working heroically for the people. The shape of the presidential contest had finally crystallized. According to the polls, President Obama had stretched his lead over challenger Romney, narrowly at the national level but decisively in the critical swing states. Campaigns are all about hope and bluff. Though no one could hear a discouraging word from the Romney campaign, the writing was on the wall. In the two-month-long dramaturgical space that stretched from the nominating conventions to election day in early November 2012, however, conspicuous opportunities remained for performative failures and successes...
eBook - ePub- Stephen K. Medvic, Stephen K. Medvic(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 12 Presidential Elections Campaigning within a Segmented Electorate Scott D. McClurg and Philip Habel 1 Presidential campaigns are arguably the most important political events in a citizen’s life. According to the American National Election Study, a biennial random sample survey conducted among citizens aged 18 or older, interest in and attentiveness to presidential elections is considerable. On average, approximately a quarter of all Americans are “very interested” in presidential campaigns, with large majorities reporting that they monitor the campaign through print and broadcast media. 2 Moreover, among Americans eligible to vote, turnout in presidential elections from 1948 to 2008 averaged just under 60 percent. 3 Contests for control of the Executive Branch are among the few moments in time when Americans are collectively focused on government and politics. As a consequence, political stakeholders—candidates, campaign managers, interest groups, pundits, to name a few—are acutely interested in communicating their priorities and positions to the public, creating opportunities for citizens to educate themselves on the health and direction of American society. Yet because stakeholders are self-interested actors they are not as committed to providing citizens with unbiased information that might facilitate “good” decisions as they are to advancing their agenda. It is this back-and-forth process among different actors that creates the unique patterns of information, emotion, and imagery and that constitutes the core of a presidential campaign and, ultimately, affects the outcome on Election Day. An unavoidable product of this situation is the presence of stark differences in the amount and quality of information available to different groups of voters. Although presidential elections are ostensibly national debates about our collective concerns, in actuality they directly involve only a small part of the nation’s states, media markets, communities, and voters...
- Dalia Elsheikh(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
...© The Author(s) 2018 Dalia Elsheikh Campaign Professionalism during Egypt’s 2012 Presidential Election Political Campaigning and Communication https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75954-8_1 Begin Abstract 1. Introduction to Studying 2012 Egyptian Election Dalia Elsheikh 1 (1) Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, UK End Abstract 1.1 Overview The year 2012 can be considered a watershed in Egypt’s history as it came after a revolution that ended the rule of Hosni Mubarak, who had been in power for 30 years. For the first time in Egyptian history, not only in modern history, Egyptians were able to choose their ruler. There had been no form of presidential elections from the first ruler King Menes (3100 BC) taking power until the election of President Hosni Mubarak (2005) which did not follow the norms of democratic elections. Even after the 1952 revolution, Egyptians were not able to choose their president through multi-candidate elections. They were only able to do this through a referendum, where they had to say yes or no to one person, who always became the president. In 2005, and after huge pressure from different powers in the country, President Mubarak changed article 76 in the constitution which allowed for a multi-candidate presidential election for the first time in Egyptian history. However, this election was widely seen as a façade, as it was already previously known that Mubarak was the one who was going to win. In 2011, the Egyptian revolution took place and for the first time in the history of the country, Egypt witnessed a real multi-candidate presidential election in 2012; where no one—even pollsters—was able to predict the winner. The period prior to this election and the election result itself showed many surprises and unpredictable results. This indicates that this field still requires some attention by experts and scholars to know how elections work in a country in its transitional phase such as Egypt at that time...
