Obama wins a second term as U.S. president

Barack Obama was elected to a second presidential term Tuesday, defeating Republican Mitt Romney by reassembling the political coalition that boosted him to victory four years ago, and by remaking himself from a hopeful uniter into a determined fighter for middle-class interests.

Obama, the nation’s first African American president, scored a decisive victory by stringing together a series of narrow ones. Of the election’s seven major battlegrounds, he won at least six.