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Voters react differently to presidential election outcome

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By Whitney Burdette - email

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President Barack Obama won re-election Nov. 6, but despite having enough support to gain a second term, voters had mix reactions to Obama's victory.

Pew Research studied how voters reacted in the minutes following Obama's victory and found 44 percent of voters were overall happy with the outcome, while 43 percent said they were unhappy. The report is based on survey data collected by Google among a sample of Internet users.

When voters were asked for a single word to describe their feelings on the election's outcome, Obama supporters said they were "relieved, " happy," "great" or "elated." Meanwhile, supporters of GOP nominee Mitt Romney said they were "disappointed," "sad" and "disgusted."

Overall, 41 percent of those surveyed, including voters and nonvoters, said they were happy Obama was re-elected while 37 percent said they were unhappy and 22 percent had no opinion. A majority of nonvoters, 55 percent, said they were neither happy nor unhappy with the results. Of those nonvoters surveyed, 29 percent said they were happy and 16 percent said they were unhappy.

Reaction was divided along party lines, Pew found. About 90 percent of Obama supporters said they were happy the president was re-elected while 88 percent of Romney supporters said they were unhappy.