It’s easy to understand why some Republicans and pollsters dismissed the idea that the Obama coalition from 2008 would be fired up and ready to go in 2012. Not possible. Not with the unemployment rate at 14.3 percent among blacks, 10 percent among Hispanics, and 11.8 percent among adults under 30.

Yet, fired up or just trudging to the polls, those groups were among President Obama’s principal bulwarks against defeat in decisive states. In some cases they made up a greater share of the national electorate than they did in 2008. The outcome confounded some conservatives and surprised even some pollsters.

African-Americans, for instance, made up 13 percent of the national electorate in the historic 2008 election. This week, after years of a down economy, months of a dispiriting campaign, and long-running rumblings about whether Obama has neglected the black community, distanced himself from it, or taken it for granted, they were still at 13 percent of the electorate.

“Black voters were absolutely not going to let Obama lose if they could help it,” said David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. They proved particularly useful to Obama in swing states. Black voters went from a 12-percent share of the electorate in Michigan in 2008 to 16 percent this week, exit polls showed, and from 11 percent to 15 percent in Ohio. Under-30 voters accounted for 19 percent of the national electorate, up from 18 percent. Hispanics, meanwhile, rose from 9 percent to 10 percent.

Read more at the National Journal.