Barack Obama has won re-election to a second term as president, although voters in Floyd, Bartow and Chattooga counties overwhelmingly backed his Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

Georgia also retained its red-state status. Romney pulled in 53.94 percent of the vote with 147 of 159 counties reporting.

Floyd County went for Romney over Obama, 22,636 to 9,595, according to unofficial results. Libertarian Gary Johnson pulled in 454 votes.

Turnout was 69.62 percent.

“I was shooting for about 70 percent,” Floyd County Elections Board Chairman Pete Mc

Donald said. “This is a little bit lower than our 73.51 percent in 2008, but it’s still a substantial turnout.”

Romney won 5,435 votes in Chattooga County compared with 2,220 for Obama and 137 for Johnson.

Bartow elections officials were still counting paper absentee ballots at midnight, but the electronic vote stood at 14,812 for Romney, 4,530 for Obama and 369 for Johnson.

Obama captured battleground Ohio from Romney and edged ahead in other pivotal states despite a weak economy and high unemployment that crimped the middle class dreams of millions.

At home in Chicago, the president claimed victory.

“This happened because of you. Thank you” he tweeted to supporters.

CNN, Fox News and MSNBC all called the race for Obama near 11 p.m.

Romney was in Massachusetts after a long and grueling bid for the presidency. He led in the national popular vote with 41 million votes, or 50 percent. Obama had 40 million, or 49 percent, with 59 percent of the precincts tallied.

But Obama led in the competition for electoral votes, where it mattered most.

His triumph in Ohio as well as in Iowa and New Hampshire, two other battlegrounds, gave him 265 electoral votes of the 270 needed for victory, Romney had 200.

The election emerged as a choice between two very different visions of government — whether it occupies a major, front-row place in American lives or is in the background as a less-obtrusive facilitator for private enterprise and entrepreneurship.

The economy was rated the top issue by about 60 percent of voters surveyed as they left their polling places. But more said former President George W. Bush bore responsibility for current circumstances than Obama did after nearly four years in office.

About 4 in 10 said the economy is on the mend, but more than that said it was stagnant or getting worse more than four years after the near-collapse of 2008. The survey was conducted for The Associated Press and a group of television networks.

Voters also chose a new Congress to serve alongside the man who will be inaugurated president in January, Democrats defending their majority in the Senate, and Republicans in the House.

The long campaign’s cost soared into the billions, much of it spent on negative ads, some harshly so.

In the presidential race, an estimated one million commercials aired in nine battleground states where the rival camps agreed the election was most likely to be settled — Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada.

In a months-long general election ad war that cost nearly $1 billion, Romney and Republican groups spent more than $550 million and Obama and his allies $381 million, according to organizations that track advertising.

According to the exit poll, 53 percent of voters said Obama is more in touch with people like them, compared to 43 percent for Romney.

About 60 percent said taxes should be increased, taking sides on an issue that divided the president and Romney. Obama wants to let taxes rise on upper incomes, while Romney does not.

Other than the battlegrounds, big states were virtually ignored in the final months of the campaign. Romney wrote off New York, Illinois and California, while Obama made no attempt to carry Texas, much of the South or the Rocky Mountain region other than Colorado.

There were 33 Senate seats on the ballot, 23 of them defended by Democrats and the rest by Republicans.

All 435 House seats were on the ballot, including five where one lawmaker ran against another as a result of once-a-decade redistricting to take population shifts into account. Democrats needed to pick up 25 seats to gain the majority they lost two years ago.

Depending on the outcome of a few races, it was possible that white men would wind up in a minority in the Democratic caucus for the first time.

Obama was elected the first black president in 2008, and four years later, Romney became the first Mormon to appear on a general election ballot. Yet one man’s race and the other’s religion were never major factors in this year’s campaign for the White House, a race dominated from the outset by the economy.