President Barack Obama, as of this post, received 60,892,345 popular votes in his Presidential re-election bid. This was down from the 69 million votes+ he received in 2008. This is not the first time an incumbent President who was re-elected for another term received fewer popular votes in his next go around than in his previous election. The last that this happened was in 1944 when Franklin D. Roosevelt received fewer votes in his fourth bid for the Presidency than in his third. The last time before that? Roosevelt once again in 1940. Here are the victorious incumbent Presidents and their popular vote totals in back to back elections.
Andrew Jackson
1828: 642,533; 1832: 701,780
Abraham Lincoln
1860: 1,855,593; 1864: 2,218,388
Ulysses S. Grant
1868: 3,013,790; 1872: 3,598,235
William McKinley
1896: 7,102,246; 1900: 7,228,864
Woodrow Wilson
1912: 6,296,284; 1916: 9,126,868
Franklin D. Roosevelt
1932: 22,821,277; 1936: 27,752,648; 1940: 27,313,945; 1944: 25,612,916
Dwight D. Eisenhower
1952: 34,075,529; 1956: 35,579,180
Richard Nixon
1968: 31,783,783; 1972: 47,168,710
Ronald Reagan
1980: 43,903,230; 1984: 54,455,472
Bill Clinton
1992: 44,909,806; 1996: 47,400,125
George W. Bush
2000: 50,460,110; 2004: 62,040,610
Barack Obama
2008: 69,498,215; 2012: 60,892,345
What accounts for the drop in Obama’s total from 2012 to 2008?
Politics Matters 
I think his votes dropped because not as many people voted for him as in 2008. During the 2008 election, Obama had a strong advantage to McCain for many reasons. However, running against Romney was more of a competition. In addition to the opposing party, maybe people did not like the way Obama has run the country the last 4 years, and therefore, did not want to elect him as president again. There can be several factors as to why Obama received fewer popular votes than last time. But I think these are the most influential factors.
I think people are probably disillusioned after his first term as president, and that a lot of them aren’t happy with Obama’s progress in his first term and aren’t as susceptible to believing his words now. They’re much less hopeful about what his plan for the economy. Perhaps they perceive us as worse off than we were when he took office. They probably just waved their hands in dismissal, thought to themselves that the country’s screwed, and stayed home on voting day.
What’s interesting, is the “other” candidates combined remained about the same. Republican vote was an approximate 3% increase and O’Bama was a 15% reduction in votes compared to 2008. This means the GOP increase came from previous O’Bama supporters. The remaining lack of voter turn out for the Democrats could be the disappointment over the last four years and dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs of our nation.
President Obama had a good campaign in 2008 and seemed to outshine McCain during the debates. He seemed to appeal to many in 2008 who were looking for change. However, 4 years later those voters who did not feel that they saw change or improvement may have reconsidered their votes this term. His speeches were new and refreshing in 2004 but their might have been those who were not impressed with him for this term. Voters wanted to see actions and if they didn’t see it between 2008 and 2012 they went a different route.