“Barack Obama is now the first president in American history to win a second term with a smaller share of the electoral vote, a smaller share of the popular vote, and a smaller aggregate vote than when he was first elected.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/morning-jay-barack-obama-and-triumph-identity-politics_662010.html
This victory was less a triumphant finish for Obama than a failure of Romney to cross the finish line. Arguably, he was neck-in-neck, if not ahead, right after the first debate. He simply couldn’t sustain that lead.
I think Romney would have done vastly better if he’d let Ryan be Ryan and draw some bright-line contrasts between the president’s plan to add $6.4 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years and Romney’s plan to balance the budget by 2020 without raising taxes. The vast majority of Americans abhor our indebtedness and want to see us reverse course.
They should dropped the less popular budgetary priorities (defense, tax cuts over spending cuts etc) and had had a viable plan to balance the budget in the first place.