(New throughout)
* Economy improved over course of 2012
* “Was always Obama’s race to lose”
* Victory won’t help break gridlock in Washington
* Tough choices ahead for Republicans
By Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON, Nov 7 (Reuters) – In the end, President Barack
Obama won re-election on the issue that was supposed to send him
packing: the sluggish U.S. economy.
The United States is still digging out from the deepest
recession in 80 years, and employers are barely adding enough
jobs to keep pace with population growth. Trillions of dollars
of household wealth have vanished in the housing bubble, while
the gap between rich and poor widens.
But historically, voters have given a second term to
incumbent presidents who preside over even modest economic
growth during an election year.
That pattern appears to have held for Obama. If the economy
is not exactly roaring ahead, it improved steadily over the
course of the year.
“It was never going to be a landslide,” said John Sides, a
political science professor at George Washington University.
“But it was always his race to lose.”
The Democratic president took major steps to boost the
economy, but they did not seem to help him much in the eyes of
voters. Polls show deep divisions on the merits of his 2009
stimulus, his Dodd-Frank financial reforms and the auto industry
bailout.
But they made a difference in one important place. Obama
campaigned heavily on the auto bailout in Ohio, where 1 in 8
jobs is tied to the industry.
That may have helped him limit his losses there among white
men, a slice of the electorate that Romney won heavily
elsewhere.
According to Reuters/Ipsos exit polls, Obama lost white men
nationwide by 21 percentage points. In Ohio, he lost white men
by only 12 points.
Obama was also helped by the fact that voters largely blame
the recession on his Republican predecessor, President George W.
Bush. Obama made that a central part of his campaign message as
he argued that Romney would bring back policies that
precipitated the crash.
If the Romney campaign wanted to focus the election on
Obama’s economic stewardship, the Obama campaign wanted to make
it a choice between two candidates.
Obama’s campaign attacked early with a barrage of negative
advertising that painted the multimillionaire former
private-equity executive as a corporate raider with little
concern about the fortunes of ordinary people.
The attacks drew unflattering comparisons to Obama’s
historic 2008 run for office, but they discredited Romney in the
eyes of many voters.
“A lot of middle-class white people who don’t have a college
degree came to the conclusion that Romney’s just not one of us,”
said Potomac Research Group analyst Greg Valliere.
GRIDLOCK AHEAD
Obama’s narrow re-election victory will not strike fear in
the hearts of Republicans, who remain in control of the House of
Representatives. Obama’s Democrats held on to the Senate, but
fewer moderates of either party will be in the mix.
That is a recipe for more gridlock and white-knuckle
showdowns over taxes and spending. Reaching consensus on even
the most routine legislation will be difficult.
“There’s not going to be a lot of goodwill on the Hill,”
said Princeton University history professor Julian Zelizer. “The
party lines will be hardened after this election.”
The increased polarization may make governing more
difficult, but it made campaigning easier for Obama. In an age
of intense partisan sentiment, Obama enjoyed more reliable
support from members of his own party than his Democratic
predecessors Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
“There are just a lot fewer people who are going to shift
from one candidate or another. They’re just a lot more hardened
on either side,” said Taylor Griffin, who advised Republican
nominee John McCain during the 2008 campaign.
For Republicans, Obama’s re-election poses uncomfortable
questions.
For the second election in a row, the Republican
presidential candidate has been unable to win more than 1 in 3
Hispanic voters, and the party could have an increasingly
difficult time competing in national elections if it fails to
make inroads among that rapidly growing slice of the electorate.
The party’s gravity center now rests in the House of
Representatives, where many lawmakers represent solidly
conservative districts. They face little incentive to compromise
on issues like immigration reform that could anger their base of
older, white voters.
Romney had to overcome lingering suspicion from
conservatives during the drawn-out battle for the Republican
nomination, and he was unable to appeal to independent swing
voters until the campaign’s closing month.
But many in the party are likely to conclude that they will
be better off nominating a more conservative candidate next
time, said Brookings Institution fellow John Hudak.
“The party is going to move right,” he said. “The line is
going to be, ‘See, we shouldn’t have nominated a moderate.'”
(Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Peter Cooney)
