Search results for

Robert Siegel talks with Ron Elving about the big picture of Tuesday's elections.

Robert Siegel talks with Debbie Elliott as polls close in Florida.

Two independent candidates won their Senate races on Tuesday, but third-party candidates barely put a dent in the presidential outcome.

President Obama delivers his victory speech in Chicago after winning a second term.

Analysts and reporters focused on the dip in optimism from the election four years ago. But at virtually no point did they appear to entertain the idea that President Obama may have won voters' trust on a personal level, identified policies that voters found appealing, or notched any worthwhile accomplishments.

The lame-duck Congress has just weeks to jump to the rescue of an economy moving closer and closer to the so-called fiscal cliff — a $600 billion cluster of automatic spending cuts and tax hikes due to hit at year's end.

Initial indications from within the GOP were that Mitt Romney's defeat wasn't seen as a rejection of the Republican platform as much as a failure of its standard-bearer to run a competent enough campaign to defeat a vulnerable incumbent.

In Florida, the presidential race is still too close to call. Exit polls show President Obama with strong support among Black and Hispanic voters in the state. The party retained a Senate seat and picked up a few key congressional races.

Voters have given President Obama a second term in office. He defeated Republican Mitt Romney in a hard-fought race in which the economy was the dominant issue. In the end, Obama narrowly won the popular vote but captured more than 300 electoral votes to Romney's 206.

Media companies are counting themselves among the winners in the 2012 election. SuperPAC spending on political ads will push the total amount spent past 2008 totals. The biggest beneficiaries are the usual suspects: Comcast, Disney, NewsCorp and CBS, but also locally owned TV and radio stations — especially those in swing states like Ohio and Florida.