Obama's second term: a new liberal era?

The re-election of Barack Obama in the November 2012 US presidential election meant that the Democratic candidate had won the popular vote in five of the past six national elections, spanning almost a quarter of a century. It raised the possibility that the conservative realignment that took hold from Richard Nixon's narrow victory in 1968, through the two terms of Ronald Reagan, and the single term of George H.W. Bush, had been superseded by a new, more liberal era in American politics.