2012 United States presidential election in Indiana
election in Indiana
A presidential election was held in Indiana on November 6, 2012, as part of the 2012 United States presidential election, in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. Indiana voters chose 11 electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote pitting incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama and his running mate, Vice President Joe Biden, against Republican challenger and former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney and his running mate, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan. Romney and Ryan carried Indiana with 54.13% of the popular vote to the Democratic ticket's 43.93%, thus winning the state's 11 electoral votes.
Indiana and North Carolina were the only two states Obama won in 2008 that flipped to the Republican column in 2012. Although Indiana normally leans Republican, in 2008 Obama had been the first Democrat to win Indiana since 1964, albeit by a narrow 1.03% margin. Unlike North Carolina, Indiana was not seriously contested again by the Obama campaign in 2012; consequently, Romney was able to carry it by a 10.2% margin and win 6 counties Obama won in 2008.
Obama carried Vigo County, home to Terre Haute, and at the time a noted bellwether; before 2020, it had voted for the winner of every presidential election all but twice since 1892. After 2012, political realignment and shift of white working-class voters to Trump, exodus of young people to cities and the rightward turn of exurban areas accelerated by the Trump era have made Vigo County generally uncompetitive to the present day. As of the 2024 presidential election, this is the last time that Delaware, LaPorte, Perry, Porter, and Vigo counties have voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. Obama won nine counties compared to 83 for Romney, who won most rural areas of the state.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “2012 United States presidential election in Indiana” as election in Indiana. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as election in Indiana. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17100236. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2012, 2008, 1964 and 2020.
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