The exit polls didn't show any huge surprises. Men preferred Romney, with 52% of them voting for him, while 55% of the women voted for Obama. Romney got 59% of the white vote but Obama got the black vote (93%), Latino vote (71%), and Asian vote (73%). As has been noted before, as the white vote drops to 70% and below, this is going to be the end of the Republican Party unless it can start appealing to women and minorities.
Young voters, 18-29, gave 60% of their votes to Obama but seniors went for Romney with 56% of their votes. The split by education was nonlinear. Noncollege voters went for Obama with 51% of the vote and people with postgraduate degrees were even more strongly Democratic (55%), but voters with a college degree went for Romney, with 51% voting for him. Voters making under $50,000 went for the Democrat but those making more than that went for the Republican. 56% of married voters supported Romney but 62% of unmarried voters went for Obama.
Lots of advice for the Republicans is being offered. Here is what Chris Cillizza suggests.
It is rumored that President Obama plans to nominate U.N. ambassador Susan Rice as Hillary Clinton's successor as Secretary of State. Since there is a history of black women named Rice running the State Dept., you might think her confirmation would be a formality. No way. Senate Republicans are talking about a comment she made shortly after Ambassador Stevens was killed in Libya and acting like she is a new Benedict Arnold. They are openly praising Sen. John Kerry to the moon as a better appointee. Apparently he improved drastically since 2004, since he wasn't getting many kudos from them then. What they really mean, of course, is "We don't give a hoot who the Secretary of State is, but we would sure like a special election for a Senate seat in Massachusetts since we think Scott Brown could win it." But saying this out loud is considered gauche in Senate circles.
The Citizens United decision seems to have unleashed right-wing billionaires, who spent millions of dollars helping Republican candidates. That balance may change a little now as New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, starts to ramp up his political spending. He dropped $9 million on some House races this year and is suggesting that is only the tip of the (rapidly melting) iceberg. After his third term as mayor is finished next year, Bloomberg plans to get more involved in funding political campaigns of people he agrees with. His major issues are gun control and climate change. With an estimated wealth of $22 billion and far more political acumen than most billionaires (who gave $300 million to Karl Rove and got nothing in return), Bloomberg could be a real force taking down candidates supported by the National Rifle Association. Bloomberg used to be a Republican but is now an independent, but given that he wants to help candidates who support gun control and want to stop climate change, much of his money is likely to go to Democrats in the future. If he were to spend 10 percent of his fortune, that is, $2 billion, on 1000 House races, he could put $2 million into each race. That is a lot of money for a House race and could significantly alter the composition of the House.
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), is currently the only candidate to lead the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2014 and many Republican senators are privately grumbling about him. He has been in the Senate less than 2 years and is not an especially good fundraiser. Republicans will be defending only 13 seats in 2014, all but one (in Maine) are easy victories, so he doesn't have to do any work there. The grumbling is that the Democrats are defending 20 seats, some of them very vulnerable. The fear among some Republicans is that tea party candidates will win primaries in these states and then lose battles they could have won and Moran will not be able to recruit establishment candidates strong enough to prevent this. The most vulnerable Democrats are as follows, but there could always be surprises in other races as well.
State | Incumbent | Party | Danger |
Alaska | Mark Begich | Dem | High |
Arkansas | Mark Pryor | Dem | Medium |
Louisiana | Mary Landrieu | Dem | High |
Montana | Max Baucus | Dem | Medium |
North Carolina | Kay Hagan | Dem | High |
South Dakota | Tim Johnson | Dem | High |
Two other Democratic senators, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), are potentially vulnerable since they are from swing states, but female Democrats did so well in New Hampshire last week and Warner is a multimillionaire capable of putting whatever it takes into his campaign in a now-purple state, they are probably not high-priority Republican targets any more.
Here are the final Senate results, except for Arizona, where 600,000 of the 3 million ballots have not yet been counted. The races are sorted in descending order of the Democratic margin, so you can see where the close races were.
State | Democrat | D % | Republican | R % | Independent | I % | D - R |
Vermont | Bernie Sanders | 71.1% | John MacGovern | 24.8% | 46.3% | ||
New York | Kirsten Gillibrand | 71.9% | Wendy Long | 26.7% | 45.2% | ||
Delaware | Tom Carper | 66.4% | Kevin Wade | 29.0% | 37.4% | ||
Minnesota | Amy Klobuchar | 65.3% | Kurt Bills | 30.6% | 34.7% | ||
Rhode Island | Sheldon Whitehouse | 64.8% | Barry Hinckley | 35.2% | 29.6% | ||
Maryland | Ben Cardin | 55.3% | Dan Bongino | 26.6% | 28.7% | ||
Hawaii | Maizie Hirono | 62.6% | Linda Lingle | 37.4% | 25.2% | ||
West Virginia | Joe Manchin | 60.5% | John Raese | 36.5% | 24.0% | ||
California | Dianne Feinstein | 61.4% | Elizabeth Emken | 38.6% | 22.8% | ||
Michigan | Debbie Stabenow | 58.8% | Pete Hoekstra | 38.0% | 20.8% | ||
Washington | Maria Cantwell | 60.2% | Michael Baumgartner | 39.8% | 20.4% | ||
New Jersey | Bob Menendez | 58.5% | Joseph Kyrillos | 39.8% | 18.7% | ||
Missouri | Claire McCaskill | 54.7% | Todd Akin | 39.2% | 15.5% | ||
Florida | Bill Nelson | 55.2% | Connie McGillicuddy | 42.2% | 13.0% | ||
Connecticut | Chris Murphy | 55.2% | Linda McMahon | 43.2% | 12.0% | ||
Pennsylvania | Bob Casey | 53.6% | Tom Smith | 44.7% | 8.9% | ||
Massachusetts | Elizabeth Warren | 53.7% | Scott Brown | 46.3% | 7.4% | ||
Indiana | Joe Donnelly | 49.9% | Richard Mourdock | 44.3% | 5.6% | ||
New Mexico | Martin Heinrich | 51.0% | Heather Wilson | 45.4% | 5.6% | ||
Wisconsin | Tammy Baldwin | 51.5% | Tommy Thompson | 45.9% | 5.6% | ||
Ohio | Sherrod Brown | 50.3% | Josh Mandel | 45.1% | 5.2% | ||
Virginia | Tim Kaine | 52.5% | George Allen | 47.5% | 5.0% | ||
Montana | Jon Tester | 48.7% | Denny Rehberg | 44.8% | 3.9% | ||
North Dakota | Heidi Heitkamp | 50.5% | Rick Berg | 49.5% | 1.0% | ||
Nevada | Shelley Berkley | 44.7% | Dean Heller | 45.9% | -1.2% | ||
Arizona | Richard Carmona | 45.8% | Jeff Flake | 49.8% | -4.0% | ||
Texas | Paul Sadler | 40.5% | Ted Cruz | 56.6% | -16.1% | ||
Nebraska | Bob Kerrey | 41.8% | Deb Fischer | 58.2% | -16.4% | ||
Mississippi | Albert Gore | 40.3% | Roger Wicker | 57.4% | -17.1% | ||
Maine | Cynthia Dill | 13.2% | Charlie Summers | 30.7% | Angus King | 52.8% | -17.5% |
Tennessee | Mark Clayton | 40.4% | Bob Corker | 64.9% | -24.5% | ||
Utah | Scott Howell | 30.2% | Orrin Hatch | 65.2% | -35.0% | ||
Wyoming | Tim Chesnut | 21.6% | John Barrasso | 75.9% | -54.3% |