The Electoral College played a major role in the 2012 election between Mitt Romney and Barrack Obama. It made it seem like Obama won by a landslide while in reality however when you take a look at the popular vote it was a very close election. Obama ended with up with 52% of the popular vote and Mitt Romney finished with 48% of the popular vote. But when you take a look at the Electoral College votes, the ones that actually matter, Obama got a little over 300 votes while Romney only received a little over 200. Now the Electoral College works so that the candidate has to win the popular vote in each individual state so that the Electoral College can give their number of corresponding votes to the final results. Even though Mitt Romney was able to get almost half the voting nation to vote for him Obama was able to get the vote of states known as battle ground states or swinger states. Many states have always voted Republican or Democrat and the candidates can be sure they will get the electoral votes from those states. However the swing states are states that could go either way and contain a significant amount of Electoral Votes. The Question is: Why was Obama able to win over these swing states that ultimately helped him win his second term? That has to do with the amount of advertising that was done on these states and the demographics of the state. Obama appealed more to the minorities of Colorado, Nevada, Virginia and Ohio which all went to Obama and were absolutely key swing states. Middle class immigrants in particular were key voters that Obama was able to gain support of. The reason Romney wasn’t able to gain the support of these voters was because he wanted to make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to gain their citizenship. Many immigrants have family that is striving towards becoming a citizen and may have been put off by Romney and voted for Obama. The absolute most important issue in this election was the economy. Both candidates focused on explaining how they were going to drop the unemployment rate from an unhealthy 7.9%. Obama said he is going to repeal Bush tax cuts on households with annual income of 250,000+, Lower taxes on manufacturing industry to try and get manufacturing jobs back in America, and heavily cut government spending and raise taxes on the wealthy. Romney was going to make Bush tax cuts permanent, only lower government spending 5% and cut regulations to encourage business. Many people in Ohio voted for Obama because of how he helped the auto industry and many people out of gratitude voted for him. Healthcare was also a major issue in the