Along with his running mate, Vice President Joe Biden,[5] Obama was opposed in the general election by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, along with various[6][7] minor candidates from other parties.

[8] On the day of the announcement, the campaign released a promotional video showing supporters of Obama organizing for the re-election effort.

On April 3, 2012, Obama won the Maryland and District of Columbia primaries, giving him more than the required 2,778 delegates to secure the nomination.

[14] The campaign was based in Chicago in One Prudential Plaza, instead of in Washington, D.C., where all other modern incumbent presidents have had their re-election headquarters.

[19] On April 29, 2011, it was announced that Matthew Barzun, the United States Ambassador to Sweden, would serve as finance chairman.

[31] On May 10, 2012, Obama attended a fundraiser in the Los Angeles home of actor George Clooney, which raised over $15 million.

The fundraiser was initially estimated to raise about $10 million, but after Obama's historic announcement of his support for same-sex marriage, the amount went up significantly.

[36] Reed helped build a team of developers from tech companies like Twitter, Google, Facebook, Craigslist, Quora, Orbitz and Threadless.

[42] Obama signed emergency declarations on October 28 for several states expected to be impacted by Sandy, allowing them to request federal aid and make additional preparations in advance of the storm.

In his victory speech in Chicago, he promised to "sit down with" Mitt Romney to discuss a bipartisan future for the United States.

[48] Jim Messina, who worked in the White House as Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations from 2009 until 2011, moved to Chicago to be campaign manager.

[20] Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, who worked at the Democratic National Committee as an executive director, was named deputy campaign manager.

[52] The other deputy campaign manager was Julianna Smoot, who was the 2008 finance director and was briefly the White House Social Secretary.

Emanuel was White House Chief of Staff from January 2009 until October 2010 and worked on President Bill Clinton's successful 1992 and 1996 campaigns.

[citation needed] In October 2010, Biden said Obama had asked him to remain as his running mate for the 2012 presidential election,[56] but with Obama's popularity on the decline, White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley conducted some secret polling and focus group research in late 2011 on the idea of replacing Biden on the ticket with Hillary Clinton.

[58] Biden's May 2012 statement that he was "absolutely comfortable" with same-sex marriage gained considerable public attention in comparison to Obama's position, which had been described as "evolving".

[67][66] An August 2012 remark before a mixed-race audience that Republican proposals to relax Wall Street regulations would "put y'all back in chains" led to a similar analysis of Biden's face-to-face campaigning abilities versus his tendency to go off track.