As the nation's first African-American president, Barack Obama benefited from and expanded his party's enormous advantage among minority voters.

But as he prepares to start his second term, Obama hasn't managed to usher in behind him many Democrats who are minorities to top elected office. Conversely, Republicans — despite their highly limited support among non-Anglo voters — have managed to elevate more top politicians from minority backgrounds.

"It's just an objective, empirical fact that more members of minority groups have done well winning in the Republican Party," says Artur Davis, a former Democratic congressman from Alabama who has switched allegiance to the GOP.

"The Republican Party has proven welcoming to minorities, and its voters will elect minorities as long as those minorities share their worldview, as long as those minorities are conservatives," Davis says.

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Still, reaching the top rungs can be difficult for African-American politicians in particular — because the vast majority of those holding elected office are in the South.

Neither Davis nor Ford was able to win election, and other blacks nominated to statewide posts in the South have done even more poorly.

In addition to the region's conservative nature, in the Deep South, "in terms of statewide elections, there's high racial polarization," says David Bositis, an expert on black politics at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Read more at NPR.

Maybe it's just math, but it may also be a great political accomplishment.

President Obama has put together a coalition that's not only been a winner for him, but promises to pay dividends to his party for years to come.

A mix of minorities, young people and educated white professionals has now driven him to two majority-vote presidential victories — the first Democrat to pull that off since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

"What historians and political scientists will focus on is that he changed the coalition of the Democratic Party," says Villanova University political scientist Lara Brown. "The new coalition is groups with ascendant demographics — new minorities and young people."

As has been widely noted this week, Obama managed to recapture broad support from groups largely responsible for his 2008 election: African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, single women, and young and highly educated whites.

Mitt Romney won 59 percent of the overall white vote, according to exit polling. With whites shrinking as a share of the electorate — and Republicans struggling to appeal to minorities — it wasn't enough.

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Obama has shown the party it can not only win but dominate the Electoral College with very little support in the South, outside states such as Virginia and Florida that are conducive to his coalition.

But there's no guarantee that other Democrats will be able to draw on the same sources of support. African-Americans and young people did not turn out in force in 2010, which was one big reason Republicans enjoyed big victories at the congressional and state levels that year.

"I wouldn't say that other Democrats could automatically count on it," says David Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank that studies minority affairs.

But, Bositis notes, there are other prominent Democrats who should be able to appeal to the same sort of constituencies that propelled Obama to victory.

Read more at NPR.