Romney was consistently competitive in the polls and won the support of many party leaders, but he faced challenges from a number of more conservative contenders.

The campaigns focused heavily on domestic issues, and debate centered largely around sound responses to the Great Recession.

Foreign policy was also discussed, including the end of the Iraq War in 2011, military spending, the Iranian nuclear program, and appropriate counteractions to terrorism.

[6] Obama is the only president since Ronald Reagan in 1984 to win a majority of the national popular vote more than once, and remains the only Democrat to do so since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944.

Ultimately, of the nine swing states identified by The Washington Post in the 2012 election, Obama won eight, losing only North Carolina.

Florida, Georgia, Ohio,[8] Tennessee, and West Virginia's state legislatures approved measures to shorten early voting periods.

Kansas, South Carolina,[9] Tennessee, Texas,[10] and Wisconsin[11] state legislatures passed laws requiring voters to have government-issued IDs before they could cast their ballots.

Former president Bill Clinton denounced them, saying, "There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today".

[12] He was referring to Jim Crow laws passed in southern states near the turn of the twentieth century that disenfranchised most blacks from voting and excluded them from the political process for more than six decades.

Clinton said the moves would effectively disenfranchise core voter blocs that trend liberal, including college students, black people, and Latinos.

The nomination process consisted of primaries and caucuses, held by the 50 states, as well as Guam, Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Democrats Abroad.

Running unopposed everywhere else, Obama cemented his status as the Democratic presumptive nominee on April 3, 2012, by securing the minimum number of pledged delegates needed to obtain the nomination.

[20][21] Candidates with considerable name recognition who entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination in the early stages of the primary campaign included U.S. representative and former Libertarian nominee Ron Paul, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who co-chaired John McCain's campaign in 2008, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the runner-up for the nomination in the 2008 cycle, and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

The first debate took place on May 5, 2011, in Greenville, South Carolina, with businessman Herman Cain, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum participating.

Another debate took place a month later, with Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, and Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann participating, and Gary Johnson excluded.

[22] Pawlenty withdrew from the race after a poor showing in the straw poll, as did Thaddeus McCotter, the only candidate among those who qualified for the ballot who was refused entrance into the debate.

[23] It became clear at around this point in the nomination process that while Romney was considered to be the likely nominee by the Republican establishment, a large segment of the conservative primary electorate found him to be too moderate for their political views.

[39] However, Romney won all of the other contests between South Carolina and the Super Tuesday primaries, and regained his first-place status in nationwide opinion polls by the end of February.

Santorum won Kansas and three Southern primaries, but he was unable to make any substantial gain on Romney, who became a formidable frontrunner after securing more than half of the delegates allocated in March.

On April 10, Santorum suspended his campaign due to a variety of reasons, such as a low delegate count, unfavorable polls in his home state of Pennsylvania, and his daughter's health, leaving Mitt Romney as the undisputed front-runner for the presidential nomination and allowing Gingrich to claim that he was "the last conservative standing" in the campaign for the nomination.

[41] After disappointing results in the April 24 primaries (finishing second in one state, third in three, and fourth in one), Gingrich dropped out on May 2 in a move that was seen as an effective end to the contest for the nomination.

[42] After Gingrich's spokesman announced his upcoming withdrawal, the Republican National Committee declared Romney the party's presumptive nominee.

Through grassroots campaign contributions, online donations, and Super PACs, Obama and Romney raised a combined total of more than $2 billion.

[102] The participants were Gary Johnson (Libertarian), Jill Stein (Green), Virgil Goode (Constitution), and Rocky Anderson (Justice).

[133] The Romney campaign had already set up a transition website, and had scheduled and purchased a fireworks display to celebrate in case he won the election.

Stock markets fell noticeably after Obama's re-election, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ, and the S&P 500 each declining over two percent the day after the election.

[161] Romney's loss prompted the Republican National Committee to try to appeal to the American Latino population by concentrating on different approaches to immigration.

These were short-lived due to activity and anger from the Republican base and may have contributed to the selection of Donald Trump as their presidential candidate four years later.

Obama was the fourth of just four presidents in United States history to win re-election with a lower percentage of the electoral vote than in their prior elections, the other three were James Madison in 1812, Woodrow Wilson in 1916 and Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 and 1944.

Additionally, Obama was the fifth of only five presidents to win re-election with a smaller percentage of the popular vote than in prior elections, the other four are James Madison in 1812, Andrew Jackson in 1832, Grover Cleveland in 1892, and Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 and 1944.