Barack Obama makes history again

US: President Barack Obama swept to re-election Tuesday, forging history again by transcending a slow economic recovery and the high unemployment which haunted his first term to beat Republican Mitt Romney.

The 44th US President, and the first African American to claim the Oval Office, was returned to power after a bitter election campaign when television networks projected he would take Ohio and his spiritual political home of Iowa.

“This happened because of you. Thank you,” Obama tweeted to his 22 million followers on Twitter as jubilation erupted at his victory party in Chicago.

Obama became only the second Democrat to secure two White House terms since World War II, but exit polls revealed a deeply divided electorate and seemed to ensure a renewal of the polarization that has gridlocked Washington.

Large crowds suddenly materialized at the White House, chanting “Four more years” and “Obama, Obama” as drivers cruising the streets of Washington honked their horns.

Obama, who took power as a prophet of hope, won re-election with a fiercely negative campaign, as he branded Romney, a former multi-millionaire corporate turnaround wizard as indifferent to the woes of the middle class. Prior to Obama's victory, no president in 70 years had won re-election with the unemployment rate above 7.4 percent. Although the economy has created more than five million jobs since the Great Recession, the rate is now 7.9 percent.

Exit polls showed that though only 39 percent of people believed that the economy was improving, around half of Americans blamed former Republican President George W. Bush for the tenuous situation, and not Obama. Obama's victory was a complete vindication for a campaign team that had predicted a close, but winnable election, despite the painful after effects of the deepest economic crisis since the 1930s Great Depression.

The President ran for re-election on a platform of offering a “fair shot” to the middle class, of fulfilling his pledge to end the war in Iraq, killing Osama bin Laden, and of building a clean energy economy.

AFP