The election is history - THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN

November 7th:                  THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN

Barack Obama handily won the American presidential election, gaining an expected 332 electoral-college votes to Mitt Romney's 206, and taking about 50% of the popular vote to the Republican's 49.9% .

In the end, Mr Romney only managed to turn Indiana and North Carolina from blue to red. Florida was the closest race; Mr Obama's margin of victory there was only about 0.6 of a percentage point. He won Ohio by two points, and Colorado and Virginia by three. But he did even better in the crucial Midwest, a region that Mr Romney had to make a big dent in to stand any chance of victory.

Mr Obama won Michigan and Wisconsin (Paul Ryan's home state) by seven, and Iowa by six. The president's re-election was assured once the results started coming in from those counties in the swing states that the campaigns fought over the hardest.

I followed the reporting into the early morning and until the concession speech by Mitt Romney.