Some quotes – from the professionals and regular citizens – about the election.

“President Obama was re-elected, relying on a coalition of voters that was broader than it was deep. Democrats maintained an edge in party identification, allowing Mr. Obama to win despite losing independent voters by several points. Forty-five percent of those who voted for Mr. Obama were racial minorities, a record number, and he actually made gains among Hispanic and Asian-American voters.” (FiveThirtyEight.com)

“The Obama campaign ran a very good campaign. The Republicans did not. There was no fraud. There was no stealing the election. There was just a really good ground game from Barack Obama and a lot of smoke and mirrors from Team Romney and outside charlatans, many of whom will now go work for Republican Super PACs making six figure salaries, further draining the pockets of rich Republicans when not on television explaining how awesome and expert they are. Whether you can bring yourself to say it or not, like it or not, Barack Obama is, today, your President. … There will be a lot of blame to go around, but, if Republicans are honest, they’ll have to concede that the Romney campaign ran a bad campaign and only almost won because the President had a bad debate.” (Conservative blog RedState.com, via NPR)

“Most Americans have markedly more pragmatic concerns than those who speak in apocalyptic terms about America’s future. They worry about jobs and how to preserve manufacturing against competition from globalisation. They are wary of redistribution towards the poor but made anxious by talk of painful reforms to such middle-class entitlement programmes as Medicare, the federally-backed health-insurance scheme for the elderly. Many women tell pollsters that they resent male politicians presuming to dictate to them about contraception and abortion. Above all, ordinary voters are desperate for more bipartisan cooperation, and furious with the gridlock in Washington.” (Economist.com)

“If I hear anybody say it was because Romney wasn’t conservative enough I’m going to go nuts. We’re not losing 95 percent of African-Americans and two-thirds of Hispanics and voters under 30 because we’re not being hard-ass enough.” (Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC)

“Republicans construe Democratic positions … as socialism and international decline. Democrats construe the Republican positions as social darwinism and militant imperialism. How you do end up with a populace split evenly between these radical belief structures?My basic take is that the stable, narrow, bitter partisan divide in America is a phenomenon driven by an interaction between two major players: the parties themselves, and the media. … The media, and this can’t be repeated often enough, is overwhelmingly biased towards producing exciting political races. Horse-race reporting gives the media the collective ability to shape the kind of narrative it needs in order to report excitingly. The increasing interaction between mass media and social media seems only to exacerbate this tendency: both mass-media analysts and private social-media contributors are rewarded for sharply divisive characterisations.” (link)

“Like the Democrats in the 80s this is the moment of change they [Republicans] need to heed or be relegated to the fringe at the national level. What we learned today is the Social Conservative is dying quickly and could only be saved by some sort of advanced life extending technology that keeps old southern white people alive for 150 years.” (link)

“A Michigan voter stopped breathing and his heart stopped beating while he sat filling out a ballot. Alerted by the man’s wife, a paramedic revived him. When he came to, he asked: ‘Did I vote?’ His wife said that was the least of their concerns. He said his most important concerns were ‘That I love you and that I finished what I came here to do … vote.’ He had.” (DailyKos)

“Good news for Mitt Romney, he has tonight won most of the Confederacy.” (The Daily Show With Jon Stewart)