2012 United States elections
elections in the United States in 2012
Elections were held in the United States on November 6, 2012. Democratic President Barack Obama won reelection to a second term and the Democrats gained seats in both chambers of Congress, retaining control of the Senate even though the Republican Party retained control of the House of Representatives. As of 2024, this is the most recent election cycle in which neither the presidency nor a chamber of Congress changed partisan control, the last time the incumbent party won the presidential election, and the last time that the party that won the presidency simultaneously gained seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Obama defeated Republican nominee Mitt Romney to win a second term, taking 51.1 percent of the popular vote and 332 of the 538 electoral votes. Romney defeated Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and several other candidates to win his party's nomination in the 2012 Republican primaries.
Democrats won a net gain of two Senate seats, retaining control of the chamber. In the first election held in the House of Representatives since the round of redistricting following the 2010 United States census, Democrats picked up eight seats but failed to gain a majority, despite winning the popular vote. In the gubernatorial elections, Republicans won a net gain of one seat. This was the first time since 1936 where a second-term Democratic president had coattails in both houses of Congress on both occasions. Moreover, this is the third straight presidential election cycle where the winner had coattails in both houses of Congress.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “2012 United States elections” is elections in the United States in 2012. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through United, States and elections, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “2012 United States elections” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.