The presidential election was nearly four months ago but data is just coming in and providing clues to why President Obama easily defeated GOP candidate Mitt Romney.
In 2012, tor the first time in history blacks voted at a higher rate than any other group. Contrarily the white vote dipped as many voters opted not to go to the polls.
Had whites voted with the same turnout of 2004, Mitt Romney would have likely won the election.
President Obama earned many laughs last evening at the White House Correspondents' Dinner
This chart from the Pew Research Center shows the declining percentage of white voters in America
The data, aggregated by William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brooks Institution, also showed that 2012 voter turnout was roughly 58 percent, down from the 62 percent that voted in 2008.
According to census date whites and blacks will remain the two largest voting bodies, at least for the next decade.
And though Latinos are the biggest factor to population growth, they comprise just 11 percent of eligible voters.
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The data also confirms what many in the Republican party feared going into the election: Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, was a particularly weak GOP candidate.
If white voters showed up to the polls in the numbers they did in 2004, when George W. Bush was running for re-election, the swing states of Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania would have tipped Republican.
Those votes would have won Romney the electoral college as well as the popular vote.
The figures also indicate a cautionary tale for Democrats, who will be heading into the 2016 election without the popular Obama headlining their ticket.
Marco Rubio, a Republican Senator from Florida, is being touted by many as a potential presidential candidate in 2016
Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University commented on the 'Obama' effect that spurred such a change in voting patterns.
'The 2012 turnout is a milestone for blacks and a huge potential turning point,' she said. 'But it also means that black turnout may not always be higher, if future races aren't as salient.'
Whit Ayres, a political consultant who is working with Senator Marco Rubio has echoed the calls for many in his party about the need to expand Republican appeal.
According to him the GOP needs 'a new message, a new messenger and a new tone.'
Earlier this week President Obama was on hand at the opening of the Bush Library in Dallas
Rubio, whose name is being tossed around as a possible White House contender, is a crucial voice for the upcoming immigration bill, which many Republicans hope can increase their appeal among minorities.
Latinos make up 17 percent of the population, but under-perform at the polls, a figure largely due a younger median age and lower rates of voter registration.
By 2024 it is projected that one in three eligible voters will be nonwhite.
Mitt Romney, who delivered the commencement address at Southern Virginia University on Saturday, was not a particularly ideal GOP candidate
The upcoming midterm elections in 2014 will provide more information on whether these voting patterns will hold.
As for 2016 a just-released Fox News poll shows that 75 percent of nonwhites believe Hillary Clinton will make a good president.
The only other politician remotely close to those numbers was Vice President Joe Biden, with 58 percent of nonwhites saying the same thing.