Editor-in-Chief
President Barack Obama won
re-election last night, capturing 303 electoral votes to Governor Mitt Romney’s
206. Florida is the only state that has yet to award a victor, as people were
still waiting in line to vote late into the night. Nonetheless, Obama captured
most of the battleground states he needed. The president won Nevada, Colorado,
Iowa, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Ohio. Ohio’s 18 electoral votes
sent Obama over the 270 votes needed to win the White House, with almost all
media outlets projecting him the winner as those results came in. Obama also
won the popular vote, 50 percent to 48 percent, over Romney.
In other elections, Democrats
kept control of the Senate, while the GOP kept control of the House of
Representatives. The Senate also saw history with the election of Tammy Baldwin
(D – Wisconsin), the first openly gay politician, as well as the first woman
elected to the Senate from Wisconsin. Hawaii and Massachusetts also elected females
to the Senate for the first time. Additionally, Maryland, Maine, and Washington
voted to approve same-sex marriage. Colorado and Washington approved measures
to legalize marijuana, and voters in Alabama and Wyoming approved legislation to,
according to CNN, “amend their state constitution to prohibit people from being
compelled to participate in Obamacare.”
