As a recovering election-night junkie, I have a few thoughts as to what happened just last night; to wit:
(1) The actual electorate turned out to be different than I had expected. For instance, it was only 72 percent white, as opposed to 74 percent white (as it was in 2008). Since non-white voters heavily favored President Obama, this was a pretty big deal.
(2) Although there was certainly not the same degree of enthusiasm, among Obama voters, that existed four years ago, the Democratic ground game did a superb job of getting (rather lukewarm) constituents to the polls--many of them for early voting. This, too, was enormous.
(3) Gov. Romney offered a most gracious concession speech, in my opinion. Considering that President Obama had referred to the former governor, during the campaign, as just about everything but the second coming of Adolf Hitler, Gov. Romney was far more gracious than I could have been, under similar circumstances.
(4) The changing composition of the American electorate will doubtless exacerbate the (inevitable) battle between those who value power most (and therefore wish to make some major compromises) and those who value principle most (and therefore do not wish to do any such thing).
Just my own post-election thoughts...