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Nevada, for example, white voters made up 80 percent of the electorate in 2000; now they're at 64 percent. The share of Hispanics in the state electorate has grown to 19 percent; Obama won 70 percent of their votes.
• Obama won most of the battlegrounds with a message that was more in sync than Romney's with minorities, women and younger voters, and by carefully targeting his grassroots mobilizing efforts to reach those groups.
• In North Carolina, where Romney narrowly defeated Obama, 42 percent of black voters said they had been contacted on behalf of Obama, compared with just 26 percent of whites, exit polls showed. Obama got just 31 percent of the state's white vote, but managed to keep it competitive by claiming 96 percent of black voters and 68 percent of Hispanics.
• Young voters in the state, two-thirds of whom backed Obama, also were more often the target of Obama's campaign than Romney's: 35 percent said they were contacted by Obama, 11 percent by Romney. Among senior citizens, two-thirds of whom voted Republican, 33 percent were contacted by Obama, 34 percent by Romney.
• Howard University sociologist Roderick Harrison, former chief of racial statistics at the Census Bureau, said Obama's campaign strategists proved themselves to be "excellent demographers."
• "They have put together a coalition of populations that will eventually become the majority or are marching toward majority status in the population, and populations without whom it will be very difficult to win national elections and some statewide elections, particularly in states with large black and Hispanic populations," Harrison said.
• One way to see the trend is to look at the diversity of young voters. Among voters under 30 years old this year, only 58 percent are white. Among senior voters, 87 percent are white.
• Brookings Institution demographer William H. Frey says policymakers and politicians need to prepare for a growing "cultural generation gap."
• "Both parties are getting the message that this is a new age and a new America," says Frey. "Finally, the politics is catching up with the demography."
• Just as Republicans need to do a better job of attracting Hispanics, says Frey, Democrats need to do more to reach out to whites.
• The face of Congress is changing more slowly than the electorate or the population, but changing it is.
• House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California was happy to highlight the news that for the first time in history, more than half the members of her caucus next

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