Pres­i­dent Obama won elec­tion to a sec­ond term Tues­day over Re­pub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney on the strength of his show­ing in tra­di­tion­ally Demo­cratic states as well as sweep­ing the heav­ily con­tested bat­tle­ground states of Ohio, Vir­ginia, Col­o­rado, Iowa, Wis­con­sin, Ne­vada, and New Hamp­shire, with Flor­ida too close to call.

At 1 a.m., Mr. Obama had 303 elec­toral votes to 203 elec­toral votes for Mr. Rom­ney, but the pop­u­lar vote in the coun­try was split down the mid­dle. With 77 per­cent of the vote counted across the coun­try, Mr. Obama had 51,052,000 votes com­pared to 50,814,000 votes for Mr. Rom­ney — 49 per­cent to 49 per­cent — in­di­cat­ing a deeply di­vided na­tion.

Mr. Obama, 51, over­came at­tacks from Re­pub­li­cans over the stag­nant econ­omy and the $5 tril­lion that was added to the na­tional debt dur­ing his term to eke out vic­to­ries in each of the bat­tle­ground states - with the pos­si­ble ex­cep­tion of Flor­ida, which he lead by a slight mar­gin.

He won Ohio by 50 per­cent to 48 per­cent, and car­ried Mr. Rom­ney's home state of Mich­i­gan with 54.1 per­cent of the vote.

2012 ELECTION RESULTS

Mr. Rom­ney, 65, a for­mer Mas­sa­chu­setts gov­er­nor and multi-mil­lion­aire busi­ness­man who grew up an hour’s drive away from here in sub­ur­ban Detroit, cam­paigned ag­gres­sively to ap­ply his busi­ness smarts to pull the econ­omy out of a lon­grun­ning funk and put 23 mil­lion un­em­ployed Amer­i­cans back to work. He vowed to re­peal “eeeeeeeeeObam­ac­are” — the Af­ford­able Care Act, though vot­ers were well aware he had im­ple­mented a very sim­i­lar health in­sur­ance man­date in Mas­sa­chu­setts.

Mr. Obama fought back, slam­ming Mr. Rom­ney as an out-of-touch plu­to­crat who har­vested strug­gling com­pa­nies for quick prof­its, pi­o­neered the prac­tice of out­sourc­ing jobs to China, and wanted to give tax cuts to mil­lion­aires by rais­ing taxes on the mid­dle class.

Mr. Rom­ney con­ceded at 12:56 a.m., when he said he had just called Pres­i­dent Obama to con­grat­u­late him on his vic­tory.

His voice hoarse from cam­paign­ing right through Elec­tion Day, in­clud­ing a cam­paign stop in the Cleve­land area, Mr. Rom­ney told sup­port­ers that while he had hoped to lead the coun­try in a new di­rec­tion and that he still be­lieved in the prin­ci­ples he ran on, vot­ers chose oth­er­wise. He said that he hoped Dem­o­crats and Re­pub­li­cans could join to­gether and do the pub­lic's work, and said he wished the Pres­i­dent well.

“This is a time of great chal­lenges for Amer­ica and I pray the Pres­i­dent will be suc­cess­ful in guid­ing our na­tion,” Mr. Rom­ney said.

Both can­di­dates bat­tered their op­po­nents with their own some­times ill-cho­senn words — Mr. Obama for sug­gest­ing that the pri­vate sec­tor was "do­ing fine" and that small busi­ness own­ers "didn't build" their own busi­nesses," and Mr. Rom­ney for say­ing that 47 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion was de­pen­dent on gov­ern­ment and con­sid­ered them­selves vic­tims.

With 91 per­cent of Ohio pre­cincts re­port­ing, Mr. Obama was ahead by less than 2 per­cent­age points. About 1.5 per­cent of the vote was shared by five can­di­dates, the larg­est of which was Lib­er­tar­ian Gary John­son with just un­der 1 per­cent. Mr. John­son cam­paigned last week­end in Bowl­ing Green.

As ex­pected, Mr. Obama car­ried heav­ily Demo­cratic Lu­cas County by 64 pe­cent to 33.4 per­cent. Four years ago, he won Lu­cas County 142,852 to 73,706, or with 64 per­cent of the vote.

Voter turn­out was higher in Lu­cas County than four years ago. In 2008, with 318,036 vot­ers on the rolls, the turn­out was 70 per­cent, with 220,457 vot­ers. The county went through a purge of in­ac­tive vot­ers two years ago, re­duc­ing the reg­is­tra­tion to 310,123.

What may have been the key is­sue in Ohio, a cru­cial swing state that no Re­pub­li­can pres­i­dent has ever failed to win, was the con­trast be­tween Mr. Obama's 2009 bail­out of the auto in­dus­try and Mr. Rom­ney's rec­om­men­da­tion in a 2008 New York Times col­umn ti­tled, "Let Detroit Go Bank­rupt."

Mr. Obama en­gi­neered a res­cue plan to save Chrysler LLC and Gen­eral Mo­tors from a cat­a­strophic bank­ruptcy, at a cost to tax­pay­ers of $80 bil­lion. Dem­o­crats said the move saved 150,000 jobs di­rectly con­nected with the auto in­dus­try and as many as 600,000 oth­ers that re­lied in­di­rectly on auto and parts man­u­fac­tur­ing.

After the car com­pa­nies re­bounded from their 2009 bank­ruptcy re­struc­tur­ing, Pres­i­dent Obama and Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden made sev­eral high-pro­file trips to Toledo to bask in the glory.

By the time he visted the Jeep plant in Toledo in 2011, all three do­mes­tic auto­makers were prof­it­able for the first time since 2004, and all were gain­ing mar­ket share for the first time since 1995. Mr. Obama said he bet on the Amer­i­can worker to save more than 1 mil­lion jobs that would have been de­stroyed in a cas­cade of auto-re­lated busi­ness fail­ures that would have fol­lowed the col­lapse of GM and Chrysler.

“That’s why we stood by the Amer­i­can auto in­dus­try … and what you’ve done vin­di­cates my faith,” Mr. Obama said then.

An Obama cam­paign TV com­mer­cial fea­tured Toledo auto worker Brian Slagle, now of Spring­field Town­ship, who feared he would lose his job.

"Obama stuck his neck out for us, the auto in­dus­try. He wasn't go­ing to let it just die, and I'm driv­ing in this morn­ing be­cause of that, be­cause of him," Mr. Slagle said in the TV ad for the Obama cam­paign.

Mr. Rom­ney found him­self boxed in due to his strongly worded ed­i­to­rial for the New York Times in No­vem­ber, 2008. The col­umn said he would sup­port gov­ern­ment guar­an­tees of pri­vate loans, and Mr. Rom­ney and his sur­ro­gates ar­gued in vain that Mr. Obama ac­tu­ally fol­lowed his ad­vice, since the com­pa­nies lit­er­ally went through a man­aged bank­ruptcy.

A slip of the tongue at a rally in De­fi­ance Oct. 25 may have sealed Mr. Rom­ney's fate. Quot­ing from a news re­port that Chrysler said was in­ac­cu­rate, Mr. Rom­ney told the crowd he heard Chrysler was con­sid­er­ing mov­ing all of its Jeep pro­duc­tion to China.

Mr. Rom­ney backed away slightly but not much when he pro­duced a round of ra­dio and TV ads that sounded like they threat­ened the same thing.

Far from phas­ing out pro­duc­tion, Chrysler is in the pro­cess of in­vest­ing $500 mil­lion in its Toledo plant with plans to hire 1,100 ad­di­tional work­ers in 2013.

Jim Ru­volo, of Ot­tawa Hills, a for­mer state Demo­cratic chair­man, said he urged the Obama cam­paign early in 2011 to tar­get the auto bail­out in Ohio.

"I said if you’re go­ing to win this state it’s be­cause of the auto res­cue," Mr. Ru­volo said. He said exit polls showed that a ma­jor­ity of vot­ers ap­proved of the auto res­cue. "He wouldn't even have been in the ball­game with­out it.

"I ques­tion why the Rom­ney peo­ple raised it the way they did in the end. It just called at­ten­tion to his bank­ruptcy state­ment. They may have been des­per­ate," Mr. Ru­volo said.

Ken Lortz, the di­rec­tor of the United Auto Work­ers union for the states of Ohio and In­di­ana, said the auto res­cue gal­va­nized work­ers in sup­port of Mr. Obama.

"Ohio’s got more auto sup­plier plants than any other state. That’s just huge in this en­tire cam­paign. I truly be­lieve this coun­try could have suf­fered an­other Great De­pres­sion if not for those auto loans," Mr. Lortz said. "I've seen work­ers re­ally ex­cited and en­er­gized about this cam­paign, but when the Jeep com­ments came out, that just took it to an­other level. And when he kept re­peat­ing those com­ments in com­mer­cials, we used that to just fur­ther en­er­gize our folks."

Mr. Obama and Mr. Rom­ney each made more than 30 cam­paign ap­pear­ances in Ohio just since May, fol­low­ing the end of the di­vi­sive Re­pub­li­can pri­mary elec­tion. Their wives and run­ning mates also made cam­paign ap­pear­ances, as did Jill Biden, wife of the Vice Pres­i­dent.

More money was spent on the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in Ohio than in any other state, ac­cord­ing to a re­port in the Na­tional Jour­nal -- $116 mil­lion by the two cam­paigns.

Pres­i­dent Obama made two cam­paign trips into Toledo. On July 5 he launched a three-day bus tour of north­ern Ohio at the Wol­cott House Mu­seum Com­plex in Maumee, with stops in Oak Har­bor, an out­door fruit stand near Port Clin­ton, and San­dusky, and con­tin­u­ing on through Cuya­hoga County to Pitts­burgh.

On Sept. 3, La­bor Day, Pres­i­dent Obama led a spir­ited rally of union sup­port­ers in Scott High School, af­ter shak­ing hands and mak­ing small talk in an un­an­nounced stop at Rick's City Diner near the Univer­sity of Toledo. He also cam­paigned in Lima and Bowl­ing Green.

Mr. Rom­ney vis­ited Toledo in Feb­ru­ary, stump­ing among Re­pub­li­cans at a North Toledo steel post fac­tory, when he was still vy­ing for the GOP nom­i­na­tion.

He re­turned for a large rally held in the SeaGate Cen­tre on Sept. 26, where he told his lis­ten­ers, "The Pres­i­dent just the other day said you can't change Wash­ing­ton from the in­side, you can only change it from the out­side. Well, we're go­ing to give him that chance on Nov. 6," a line he was to use in many more ral­lies be­fore the elec­tion was over.

Mr. Rom­ney held a rally in Bowl­ing Green and his wife held a "Women for Mitt" rally on the cam­pus of the Univer­sity of Find­lay.

Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and Re­pub­li­can run­ning mate Paul Ryan also cam­paigned in north­west­ern Ohio.

One thing the two can­di­dates agreed on was choice of ac­com­mo­da­tions. Both used the Hil­ton Ho­tel on the cam­pus of the Univer­sity of Toledo Med­i­cal Center to lodge their large con­tin­gents of cam­paign aides, Se­cret Ser­vice agents, and trav­el­ing jour­nal­ists.

"It's tough to beat an in­cum­bent pres­i­dent," said Ohio Re­pub­li­can Chair­man Bob Ben­nett of Mr. Rom­ney's los­ing ef­fort to un­seat Mr. Obama. He noted that Mr. Rom­ney was also trail­ing in Flor­ida and Col­o­rado, so Ohio wasn't the de­ter­min­ing state, and it kept its bell­wether sta­tus. "Once again we mir­rored the na­tion. As goes Ohio so goes the na­tion."

Former Toledo Mayor Carty Fink­beiner, who was in Chi­cago to cel­e­brate with the Obama cam­paign, said the Obama strat­e­gists fo­cused on key swing states and planned early to run against Mitt Rom­ney.

"It worked, but not by a lot," Mr. Fink­beiner said.

When asked the cause of Mr. Rom­ney's de­feat, state Demo­cratic Chair­man Chris Red­fern ut­tered four words, “Let Detroit go bank­rupt.”

“The Jeep fa­cil­ity, which was built with the sup­port of a Re­pub­li­can gov­er­nor, George Voi­nov­ich, Re­pub­li­can Gov. Bob Taft, and a Demo­cratic gov­er­nor, Ted Strick­land, now finds it­self not be­ing sup­ported by a Re­pub­li­can gov­er­nor, John Ka­sich,” he said. “It's re­ally re­mark­able that a Re­pub­li­can gov­er­nor of a state that de­pends so heav­ily on man­u­fac­tur­ing and the Amer­i­can au­to­mo­bile in­dus­try would lit­er­ally walk away from that in­dus­try and hold hands with Mitt Rom­ney, who lit­er­ally be­lieved then, as he be­lieves now, that Detroit should go bank­rupt.”

One Toledo voter who sup­ported Mr. Obama said he de­served an­other four years, and said it was wrong for his po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents to tar­get him for de­feat al­most as soon as he was sworn into of­fice.

"He was about mak­ing changes," said Jan­ni­fer Camp­bell, 60, of South Toledo, a re­tired Toledo Pub­lic Schools teacher. "Obam­ac­are is good, the fact that he's put­ting in more money to help teach­ers, that's good. He was help­ing peo­ple that needed a help­ing hand." If she had a com­plaint, it's that Mr. Obama is too nice.

"He did a lot of good that peo­ple didn't give him credit for. He didn't learn to toot his own horn," Ms. Camp­bell said.

Dan Mar­tin, 35, owner of two Miss­cue pool hall tav­erns in Toledo, said his busi­ness is suf­fer­ing from the reg­u­la­tions and taxes he said are im­posed by the gov­ern­ment. He sup­ported Mr. Rom­ney but would have voted Lib­er­tar­ian if he thought a Lib­er­tar­ian could win.

“I can’t see why any­body in their right mind would put Barack Obama back in of­fice af­ter the last three years. I voted Re­pub­li­can across the board. Ev­ery­thing the Dem­o­crats do tends to make it harder and harder for me to run my busi­ness,” said Mr. Mar­tin, who voted at Glen­dale-Feil­bach School in South Toledo, with his wife, Amy Mar­tin, 29, and their sons, Ben­ja­min and Natha­niel.

Con­tact Tom Troy at:

tom­troy@the­blade.com

or 419-724-6058.

First Published November 7, 2012, 7:51 a.m.