United States presidential election, 2012 (The West Wing)
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All 538 electoral votes of the Electoral College 270 electoral votes needed to win | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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.svg) Presidential election results map. Blue denotes those won by Santos/Baker, red denotes states won by Everly/Veel. Numbers indicate electoral votes allotted to the winner of each state. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The United States presidential election of 2012 was the 57th quadrennial American presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. The incumbent, President Matthew Santos, and his running mate Vice President Eric Baker, were defeated by Republican challenger Richard Everly and his running mate Rowan Veel.
Santos secured the Democratic Party's nomination with little opposition and the Republicans were united in their support of Everly, who had beaten a few challengers, including former White House Counsel Ainsley Hayes, Senator Harold Harmer, and former Michigan governor Andrew Benavides.
The campaign was centered around foreign policy and the handling of Kazakhstan by the Santos administration. The US intervention in the region became extremely unpopular following the deaths of 153 American servicemen which were widely covered in the press. Polling consistently showed most Americans were unaware of why the United States had troops in Kazakhstan, which political analysts agreed contributed to the intervention's unpopularity. Furthermore, the Santos administration made no comments or released any plans for the US' exit from the country, which contributed to the perception that he had lost sight of the mission. Besides Kazakhstan, other issues at play were the federal budget (including the future of social programs often referred to as "entitlement programs"), healthcare, energy (including nuclear power), and terrorism in the Middle East and within the United States.
Everly defeated Santos by a Electoral Vote tally of 281 to 257 and a popular vote margin of 50.8% to 48.9%. Santos lost his home state of Texas which ensured his electoral college loss and he became the first Democratic president since Jimmy Carter to serve only one term. When he left office, Santos had an approval rating of around 47%. Everly's victory also ended the Democratic Party's 12-year hold on the White House.