With voters worn by hard times yet many of them hopeful of better times ahead, Americans tended to revert to more traditional lines compared with the broader-based coalition that made Barack Obama president four years ago.
President Obama held onto the demographic groups that traditionally make up his party's base — young and unmarried people, political moderates, women, blacks, Latinos, the least and most educated, city dwellers, lower-income voters and union members — yet struggled with others who helped sweep him to victory in 2008.
Men, political independents, Roman Catholics and suburbanites — who backed Mr. Obama four years ago — this time gave more votes to Mitt Romney, according to independent nationwide surveys of voters leaving the polls and telephone interviews with some of the roughly 30 million Americans who voted early.
The president did, however, barely hold onto college graduates and mothers, groups that until 2008 were a mainstay of the Republican Party. Mr. Obama and his campaign assiduously courted both groups, just as last time. But he lost the independents who were among the most closely watched groups in the crucial swing states of Ohio and Virginia, although Florida's independents seemed divided.
Mr. Romney retained the support of most other typically Republican groups, including whites, older Americans, Southerners, rural residents, married voters, regular churchgoers and, overwhelmingly, white evangelical Christians, many of whom expressed hostility to Mr. Romney, as a Mormon, in both his 2008 and 2012 campaigns.
Perhaps indicating their antipathy to Mr. Obama, white evangelical Christians were more supportive of Mr. Romney than they were of Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee of 2008, and roughly as supportive as they were of President George W. Bush.
Mr. Romney got the votes of more whites than Mr. McCain, and, unlike Mr. McCain, he was supported by a majority of young white voters under age 30.
In short, the electorate this year looked a lot more like that of 2004, when Mr. Bush narrowly defeated Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat, to win re-election, than Mr. Obama's diverse majority coalition of 2008. The shifts among major demographic groups were first seen in the 2010 midterm elections, when the Democrats lost control of Congress as the economy sputtered.
Significantly, the electorate's view of the government's role in the economy has shifted, too, away from Mr. Obama's call for a kind of public-private partnership, and toward Mr. Romney's hands-off, free-market platform.
In November 2008, when the country was floundering in the worst recession since the Depression, Election Day surveys of voters found that 51 percent of them wanted government to do more to intervene while 43 percent said it was doing too many things better left to businesses. Now, after four years of government activism, those numbers have flipped.
In some states where government intervention like the auto bailout was palpable, however, Mr. Obama benefited. For example, Ohio voters overwhelmingly supported the 2009 federal aid to automakers, according to surveys of those who voted, and about three-quarters of them backed Mr. Obama.
This was no surprise: a big majority said the economy was the most important issue. Majorities of those voters and of the smaller portion who called federal budget deficits the nation's primary issue supported Mr. Romney. Mr. Obama won most voters who named foreign policy or health care as their top concern.
A bare majority still blames Mr. Obama's predecessor, Mr. Bush, more than him for the economy's lingering problems. That helps explain how the president remained a formidable contender for a second term though no modern incumbent has won re-election with an unemployment rate near 8 percent.
So, too, does the growing share of voters who view the economy's condition — and their own — as improving. Roughly 4 in 10 said the economy is getting better, and they overwhelmingly supported Mr. Obama, while those who said it is "staying the same" or getting worse backed Mr. Romney.
As in national polls before the election, just over half of voters said the country is on the wrong track. Still, 53 percent of voters approved of Mr. Obama's job performance, about the minimum considered necessary for a president to be re-electable.
The president probably was helped in the campaign's final week by his widely praised handling of the federal government's response to Hurricane Sandy. Nearly two-thirds of voters said it was a factor in their vote; those who called it "a very important" factor chose Mr. Obama.
He was seen generally as more empathetic and better able to handle Medicare and an international crisis. Mr. Romney narrowly had the edge as better able to handle the economy and the federal budget deficit. A majority said Mr. Romney would favor the rich; a plurality said Mr. Obama's policies favor the middle class.
Three-fifths of voters said they opposed raising taxes to help cut the deficit, a finding that favored Mr. Romney. But almost half support higher taxes on incomes over $250,000, as Mr. Obama has proposed.
The Obama campaign's emphasis on winning Latino voters seemed to pay off. Mr. Obama maintained support among Latino voters, who are about one in 10 of the electorate, and growing, including in swing states and Republican states like Texas. Mr. Obama got about 7 in 10 Latinos and more than 9 of 10 black voters. He also won overwhelming support from the small, growing slice of voters who are Asian-Americans.
Some Republican leaders have warned of the long-term danger for their party as the nation becomes less white if Democrats solidify the allegiance of such ethnic groups as Latinos and Asian-Americans, or, conversely, if Republicans forfeit it by perpetuating their image as a party hostile to immigrants. A few leaders, like former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, saw a more immediate risk and publicly warned Mr. Romney during the Republican nomination race that his hard-line stand on immigration could backfire.
Seven in 10 voters said they made up their mind before September; they slightly favored Mr. Obama. Of the roughly one in 10 who decided in recent days, a slight majority supported Mr. Romney.
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