Victor Davis Hanson, Orange County Register
Barack Obama won a moderately close victory over Mitt Romney on Tuesday. But oddly, nothing much has changed. The country is still split nearly 50/50. There is still a Democratic president, and an almost identically Democratic Senate at war with an almost identically Republican House, in a Groundhog Day America.Obama's win did not really reflect affirmation of his first term, given that the president made only halfhearted efforts to defend Obamacare, the stimulus, huge Keynesian deficits, and his attempts to implement cap-and-trade. So if there is a second-term agenda, even Obama...

George Will, Washington Post
America’s 57th presidential election revealed that a second important national institution is on an unsustainable trajectory. The first, the entitlement state, is endangered by improvident promises to an aging population. It has been joined by the political party, whose crucial current function is to stress the need to reform this state. And now the Republican Party, like today’s transfer-payment state, is endangered by tardiness in recognizing that demography is destiny.Perhaps Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election on Sept. 22, 2011, when, alarmed by Texas Gov. Rick...

This is where you'll find the Idaho election results for the 2012 presidential election.

Idaho's four electoral votes will go to Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and 2012 Republican presidential nominee. The Republican nominee held a commanding lead going into Election Day and he is expected to win with over 60 percent of the vote.

Click here to check out our interactive election maps and to drill down on the data as the votes are counted.

Below, a live blog of the latest results and election news.

John Podhoretz, New York Post
If Mitt Romney wins tonight, it’ll likely be because of something revealed by a little-noticed statistic released yesterday by the polling firm Rasmussen — following a similar statistic last week from Gallup.Rasmussen revealed that for the month of October, its data showed that among likely voters, the electorate is 39 percent Republican and 33 percent Democratic.This comes from a survey of 15,000 people taken over the course of a month. Yes, 15,000 people —15 times the number in a statistically significant poll.

Rutenberg & Zeleny, New York Times
The most expensive presidential race in American history now becomes the biggest show on television, a night with enough uncertainty that it could become a telethon lasting well into morning.For the third time in the last four presidential campaigns, the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees went into Election Day close in the national polls, with not one of the major opinion surveys giving President Obama or Mitt Romney a lead of statistical significance. 

Robert Stacy McCain, The American Spectator
BLUE ASH, Ohio -- Tens of thousands of Republicans were jammed into a Friday night rally in the Cincinnati suburb of West Chester, and Ron Sokol leaned over the crowd-control barricade to talk about what he's witnessed during his door-to-door canvassing expeditions."Between now and 2008, I see a world of difference," Sokol said, explaining how much more enthusiasm there is for GOP nominee Mitt Romney -- and how much less for Barack Obama. Sokol also mentioned that Republican get-out-the-vote operations here in Butler County have been bolstered by an influx of volunteers from...

King & Meckler, Wall St. Jrnl
President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney crisscrossed the country Sunday to energize supporters in key states, as new polls forecast a down-to-the-wire election and both sides claimed they had the momentum to win.The Romney camp, combing through surveys taken in the waning days of the campaign, pointed to strength among independent voters, anxiety over the economy and greater enthusiasm among conservatives as signs that the Republican would win, potentially with victories in states such as Pennsylvania and Minnesota that a GOP presidential candidate hasn't carried for decades. 

Doyle McManus, LA Times
After a year of campaign sound and fury, we're about to hold an election that will probably fail to usher in the one thing voters of all stripes would like to see: an end to the partisan gridlock in Congress.Neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney appears likely to win the kind of landslide victory that provides a mandate for big change. And whoever wins the presidency is almost certain to face at least two years of divided government in Congress: a Republican House, a Democratic Senate.

Ezra Klein, Bloomberg
In 2007, when Mitt Romney sat down with the Wall Street Journal editorial board, the candidate for the Republican presidential nomination was eager for the influential paper's blessing. What he got, instead, was their bemusement.The paper's account of the interview begins with a three- word quote from Romney: "I love data." The Journal editors go on to slyly note, "Mitt Romney has been speaking for less than two minutes when he makes this profession." They then quote him again. "I used to call it 'wallowing in the data.' Let me see the data. I want...

Erin McPike, RealClearPolitics
SABINA, Ohio -- The Romney campaign believes it must win Ohio to have a shot at unseating President Obama, but signs indicate the team is struggling to figure out how. Nonetheless, a disruption in campaign travel plans caused by Hurricane Sandy has created extra opportunities to make gains in the state.Messages emanating this weekend from Romney surrogates and the candidates on the ticket were muddled. And the auto bailout continues to be uniquely troublesome for their hopes in Ohio.Republican Gov. John Kasich, who took office in early 2011, introduced Paul Ryan at a high school gymnasium in...

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's super- political action committee is wading into three competitive U.S. House races in an unusual move to help Republicans in her state's congressional delegation.

Steve Benen, MSNBC
In some ways, I suppose it's fitting. Romney, before even launching his 2012 presidential campaign, based much of his national ambitions on the "apology tour" -- it was the basis for the title of his 2007 "memoir" -- and he included the falsehood in his kick-off speech in June 2011. It stands to reason, then, that the same lie would provide a bookend, bringing the Republican's ridiculous smear full circle.

MORRISON, Colo. -- Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's son Tagg has apologized to President Barack Obama for saying in a radio interview that he was tempted to "take a swing" at the president for criticizing his father during a debate.

Tagg Romney on Monday walked up on stage with other family members after the third presidential debate, where cameras showed him shaking hands and exchanging words with Obama. After the second presidential debate, Tagg told a radio interviewer it made him angry when Obama questioned his father's honesty.

Tagg Romney said, quote, "You want to rush down to the debate stage and take a swing at him."

A Romney campaign official confirmed Tuesday that Tagg apologized for the remark. The official was not authorized to discuss personal matters and thus demanded anonymity.

A major cable provider is offering a notorious anti-Obama movie to all its subscribers for free. The company, Armstrong Cable, operates in six states including Pennsylvania and the critical swing state of Ohio. The move comes just days after the Armstrong's Chairman of the Board donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee.

Caitlin Huey-Burns, RCP
After congressional Democrats suffered what President Obama characterized as a "shellacking" in the 2010 midterm elections -- forcing Rep. Nancy Pelosi to relinquish the speaker's gavel -- it appeared that Democratic erosion in the Senate might turn the upper chamber over to Republicans in two years' time.But political climates often shift and candidates are unpredictable -- as Missouri Republican Todd Akin proved with his infamous "legitimate rape" comment. Just that quickly, once bright outlooks can turn cloudy.With their prospects for taking control...

E.J. Dionne, Wash Post
WASHINGTON -- Everywhere you turn, President Obama is accused of not offering a clear second-term agenda. It's not surprising that Republicans say it, but you also hear it from quarters sympathetic to the president.But how true is the charge?The president does lack a crisp, here's-my-plan set of sound bites. What's less obvious is whether this should matter to anyone. Mitt Romney's own five-point plan sounds good, but is quite vague and, upon inspection, looks rather like five-point plans issued by earlier Republican presidential candidates. Moreover, Romney has been...

Jonathan Bernstein, Salon
Why did Mitt Romney embarrass himself on Libya in this week’s debate? One possibility: Because he, and the Republican Party in general, have opened up an alarming policy deficit between themselves and Barack Obama and the Democrats.What I mean by that is that Romney, Republicans and conservatives have, in case after case, simply given up on crafting viable public policy. That wasn’t always the case. When Ronald Reagan took office, conservative think tanks were ready with a host of ideas for transforming what government did and the way it did it. As recently as the 2000...

A pair of columns published by Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman of Aurora within the past year contain passages of previously published work by other House members but did not attribute the source of the information or writing.

The op-ed columns on different subjects were published beneath Coffman's byline in The Denver Post and the Denver Business Journal.

The Truth-o-Meter says: Mostly True | Barack Obama says George W. Bush never sought to defund Planned Parenthood

During a town hall presidential debate in which audience members got to ask the questions, one woman asked Mitt Romney how he would differ from the last Republican to occupy the White House: George W. Bush. "Since both you and President Bush are Republicans, I fear a return to the policies of those years should you win this election," said undecided voter Susan Katz. "What is the biggest difference between you and George W. Bush, and how do you differentiate yourself from George W. Bush?" Romney detailed several ways he would depart from ...

>> More

The Truth-o-Meter says: False | Linda McMahon says opponent Chris Murphy 'was raking in $1 million in salary' in Congress

In an ad in the hard-fought U.S. Senate race in Connecticut, Republican Linda McMahon charges that her Democratic opponent, Rep. Chris Murphy, has been getting rich in Congress. The ad focuses on Social Security and Medicare, but it includes a momentary detour into how much Murphy got paid for his labors in the Capitol. The narrator asks, "Why is Congressman Chris Murphy lying to you about Linda McMahon and Social Security? Because while Murphy was raking in $1 million in salary, he voted to cut Medicare for current recipients by $716 billion."
>> More

The Truth-o-Meter says: Mostly False | Ryan says six studies say the math works in Romney tax plan

Mitt Romney’s tax plan plays a vital role in his economic program. He says it by itself will create seven million new jobs. He has been defending his proposal ever since economists at the Tax Policy Center -- a team with both Republican and Democratic connections -- said the numbers in Romney’s plan do not add up. The Obama campaign has relied on that study to attack Romney in television ads and on the stump. In the vice presidential debate, the moderator pressed Paul Ryan to fill in the missing details that would allow a clear ...

>> More

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — President Barack Obama's campaign says it has surpassed 4 million donors, a record for a presidential campaign.

The president's field director Jeremy Bird announced the total in an email to supporters Saturday night.

Obama's campaign has relied on small donors to boost its fundraising totals through the summer and fall. The campaign raised $181 million in September, its biggest haul of the cycle.

Republican Mitt Romney's campaign has not yet announced its September fundraising numbers.

Ari Berman, The Nation
In recent weeks, in states from Florida to Ohio to New Hampshire, courts have blocked new laws passed by Republicans that restrict the right to vote for young, minority, elderly, disabled and low-income voters. A major exception to that trend had been Pennsylvania, where GOP House majority leader Mike Turzai famously predicted that the state's voter ID law was "going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania." But on October 2, Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson, a Republican, thwarted Turzai's hopes by ruling that voters in...

Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal
The vice presidential debate was uniquely important because if Paul Ryan won it or did well, the Romney-Ryan ticket's momentum would be continued or speed up. If he did not, that momentum would slow or stop. So the night carried implications. The debate, obviously, was the Republican versus the Democrat, a particular kind of conservative versus a particular kind of liberal, one philosophical approach versus another. Beyond that there was some iconic weight to it. It was age versus youth; full, white-haired man versus lean, black-haired man. Youth is energy—new ideas and new...