A fluctuation in the jet stream unusual for mid-winter has created a wild range of weather.

Tornado watches have been issued for parts of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas, and April-like thunderstorms are expected in Chicago.

Other states from Texas to Florida, Kansas and parts of the Midwest and Northeast are experiencing record heat. Record warmth is expected today ahead of the storms, with record highs possible in Chicago, St. Louis and Tampa that could reach 60 degrees or more, 73 degrees and 83 degrees, respectively.

Additionally, a powerful cold front will slam into the mid-Mississippi Valley today, producing tornadoes and gusty winds near 80 mph. The biggest chance for tornadoes is from Little Rock, Ark., to Memphis, Tenn., but the entire area from Dallas to Houston, New Orleans, Chicago, Indianapolis and St. Louis could see tornadoes and damaging winds.

The storms will also create flooding from the Midwest to the Northeast, with some areas getting as much as three inches of rain.

The unusual weather will linger through this evening. Areas most at risk for tornadoes include southern Illinois, southwest Indiana, western Kentucky, northern Louisiana, Mississippi, southeast Oklahoma, western Tennessee and northeast Texas, according to NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.

Behind the flooding rain and record warmth, cold air is expected to move in this week.

Already in the West, 18 states from Michigan to New Mexico and up to Washington have winter weather warnings and advisories.Blizzard-like conditions might develop on Thursday for places including Des Moines, Iowa; Rochester, Minn.; Eau Clair, Wis., and Green Bay, Wis.These areas will see as much as eight inches of snow, with gusty winds near 35 to 45 mph. The combination could create white-out conditions.

The weather will shift dramatically in Chicago by Thursday, dropping from the record high of more than 60 degrees today to 17. Sub-zero wind chill temperatures are likely for most of the Midwest.

Along the East Coast, warm air is moving in. Highs will approach 50 degrees today in New York City, with a high of 60 possible Wednesday. Washington, D.C., will approach the mid- to upper-60s Wednesday.

The cold air will finally arrive in the Northeast and the East Coast by Friday, blasting the areas with frigid temperatures for the weekend, sweeping in from D.C. to Boston.

A cheer went up - and not surprisingly.

Since Islamist militants seized control of Mali's north following a military coup in March 2012, the country has been convulsed by conflict.

Its musical community, whose singers and players have won worldwide acclaim, has been targeted by the hardline Islamists bent on imposing sharia, or Islamic law. Concerts have been banned in northern cities, clubs closed, instruments smashed and burned, musicians harassed and forced to flee.

This weekend's "Sahara Soul" concert at London's Barbican, featuring Bassekou Kouyate, Sidi Toure and the desert blues band Tamkirest, showcased the country's musical riches and called for peace. But it also indicated that there were differing visions of what any peace might entail.

"There is just one message - peace," Sidi Toure told Reuters backstage before the concert. "If you filled this room with gold and diamonds, it would not be more important than peace."

Toure hails from Gao on the banks of the River Niger in the Sahel region and performs Songhai folk songs with a trance-like beat. Music, he said, was ingrained in Malian life.

"When you feel bad, only music can cure you. We have many different kinds - for your first child, for weddings, for parties."

But it has been forbidden in Gao since an official of the Ansar Din (Followers of God) militant group stated in August: "We do not want Satan's music."

"At the cultural centre, they made a fire in the street of all the instruments. Now all the musicians have left, for Bamako, for Niger, for Burkina Faso," Toure said.

Malians welcomed the French military action three weeks ago as Islamist forces advanced on the capital Bamako, he said.

"Without the French intervention, that would have been the end of Mali. The French saved Mali," he said.

WELLSPRING OF THE BLUES

Until the war pushed Mali to the forefront of U.S. and European security concerns with fears the Islamists would turn the country into a base for international attacks, Mali was probably best defined for the outside world by its music.

It is seen as the wellspring of American blues, transported to Mississippi and Memphis by slavery.

Artists such as Amadou and Mariam, the blind couple from Bamako, have sold millions of records and fill concert halls worldwide. The desert blues band Tinariwen, born out of the Touareg rebellion, won a Grammy award last year.

The annual Festival in the Desert, held near the fabled city of Timbuktu, was a pilgrimage for many foreigners, among them ex-Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant and U2's Bono. That will not happen this year.

"Today Mali is different, because of terrorism by those who want to impose sharia; no music, no TV, no telephones, no democracy. This is no good," Kouyate told the audience.

Kouyate, from Segou, southern Mali, plays a wooden acoustic instrument called the ngoni, a forebear of the banjo. He recalled that on the day of the military coup last March, his band had just started recording their latest album in Bamako. They heard the shooting in the streets.

His final song, "Ne me fatigue pas", takes aim at the coup that brought down an elected government.

The coup gave new impetus to a long-running Touareg separatist rebellion in the Sahara desert of the north. That, however, was swiftly taken over by the Islamists, many said to be foreign veterans of the Afghan and Libyan battlefields.

Last week a host of Malian musicians, including Amadou and Mariam, recorded a song for peace in Bamako under the banner Voices United for Mali.

"Malian people look to us," singer Fatoumata Diawara, the project organizer, said in Bamako. "They have lost hope in politics. But music has always brought hope in Mali."

The lyrics refer directly to the situation in the north, saying: "Such catastrophe, such desolation ... tell the North that our Mali is one nation, indivisible!"

TOUAREG STRUGGLE

The Touareg band Tamikrest took to the stage in London in desert robes to play their songs of struggle, the hypnotic guitar jams punctuated by ululations.

But leader Ousmane Ag Mossa made clear beforehand that although he was all for peace, Malian solidarity was a different matter.

The government based in the south was just as much his problem as the Islamists, he told Reuters.

"We have never seen Mali as one country. Our movement is for our independence. We are the children of suffering. There have been a lot of massacres against us. It was always like this."

"Now they want to destroy us under the banner of fighting terrorism. The message of the music is always peace. But the musicians of the south are only finding out now what has been going on," he said.

As a boy in the 1990s, Ousmane lost family in a period of intense warfare between the army and the Touareg. He took up the guitar as the best way to get his people's message across, founding the band, now based in Algeria, in the city of Kaled in 2006.

"If we had been treated well and fairly, our situation would have been different. We have been treated as a bunch of nomads only good for herding livestock. We are not seen as Malians," he said, speaking in Tamashek, the Touareg language.

"People who are interested now are only smelling the smoke of the fire we have been in for a century," he said.

For the show's finale, the three bands joined together on stage for a rousing jam fusing electric guitars, ngonis, scratch percussion and vocals.

A fleeting moment of unity, or a sign that Malians might one day achieve harmony?

(Reporting by Angus MacSwan; Editing by Will Waterman)

The U.S. is due to report durable goods and pending home sales for December later in the day, but the numbers would have to sharply disappoint to dampen enthusiasm for stocks, analysts said.

"The heavy slate of US data releases this week will keep markets busy but overall we see little to dent the positive tone to risk assets over coming sessions," Mitul Kotecha of Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong wrote in a market commentary.

The Nikkei in Tokyo opened higher but then slipped 0.8 percent to 10,840.11 as investors cashed in shares following strong gains. Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.5 percent to 23,691.42. Benchmarks in mainland China, Singapore, Taiwan and the Philippines also rose.

South Korea's Kospi fell 0.3 percent to 1,940.44, dragged down by Samsung Electronics, the world's No. 1 smartphone maker, which plunged 3 percent after Friday saying the strong won would hurt earnings this year. Steelmaker POSCO lost 3.4 percent.

Australian markets were closed for a public holiday.

On Friday, the Standard and Poor's 500 index closed above 1,500 for the first time in more than five years after good earnings reports from Starbucks and Procter & Gamble, the world's largest consumer products maker.

"Wall Street performed pretty well, that has helped overall sentiment this morning," said Jackson Wong, vice president of Tanrich Securities in Hong Kong. Banking stocks did well on the back of a European Central Bank statement Friday that banks in the region were expected to pay back emergency loans faster than previously expected, increasing confidence that Europe's debt crisis is easing.

Hong Kong-listed Bank of China Ltd. rose 1.1 percent. South Korea's Shinhan Financial Group gained 4 percent. Japan's Nomura Holdings added 1 percent.

The S&P 500 index rose 0.5 percent to 1,502.96. The index had not closed above 1,500 since December 2007, the start of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.5 percent to close at 13,895.98. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.6 percent to 3,149.71.The Dow is now just 268 points below its record high of 14,165, reached on Oct. 9, 2007, two months before the Great Recession began.

Benchmark oil for March delivery was up 16 cents to $96.04 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 7 cents to close at $95.88 in trading on the Nymex. It ended the week with a gain of 32 cents.

In currencies, the euro slipped to $1.3463 from $1.3467 late Friday in New York. The dollar rose to 91.02 from 90.98 yen. The euro rose to an 11-month high against the dollar Friday after the ECB announcement.

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Follow Pamela Sampson on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pamelasampson

Armstrong won seven straight Tour de France titles from 1999 but had them stripped when he was found guilty of doping in October last year before he spoke about his wrongdoings for the first time on American television last week.

Wiggins at first said he would not watch the interview but the Briton in the end tuned in - with his seven-year-old son for company.

"It's heart breaking for the sport and then the anger kicks in. It was difficult," Wiggins told reporters on Thursday at Team Sky's training camp in Mallorca ahead of his season opener on the Spanish island.

"By the end of the hour and a half, I had the best feeling in the world. Part of me didn't want to watch it. The fan in me didn't want that perception of him as an amazing athlete to be broken.

"Then I got quite: 'You deserve everything you got.' So within two hours of watching the whole thing, the emotions were up and down. By the end I didn't feel any sympathy for him at all."

Wiggins, beaten to third place by Armstrong in the 2009 Tour, said he had felt enormous pride when he told his son he was no cheat.

"I had to explain it to my son because he'd won the same race his dad had won," said the 32-year-old father-of-two.

"When he (Armstrong) started welling up about his 13-year-old son, and him asking what's all this about. I never have to have that conversation with my own son as his father's won the Tour clean.

"There's this element of being quite smug about the whole thing. Watching him suddenly cave in after all these years of lying so convincingly, there was a lot of anger, a lot of sadness and I was slightly emotional as well, if I'm honest.

"It was difficult to watch. My wife couldn't watch it and walked out of the room."

(Writing by Tom Pilcher, editing by Mark Meadows)

The legally-binding agreement aims to phase out many products that use the toxic liquid metal such as batteries, thermometers and some fluorescent lamps, through banning global import and exports by 2020.

The treaty will require countries with coal-fired power plants such as India and China to install filters and scrubbers on new plants and to commit to reducing emissions from existing operations to prevent mercury from coal reaching the atmosphere.

"We have closed a chapter on a journey that has taken four years of often intense but ultimately successful negotiations and opened a new chapter towards a sustainable future," said Fernando Lugris, chair of the negotiations.

The deal also includes measures to reduce mercury use in small-scale gold mining, although stopped short of an all-out ban. Gold prices near $1,700 a metric ton have spurred the use of mercury as a catalyst to separate gold from its ore.

Emissions of mercury from artisanal and small-scale gold mines, which are usually unofficial and often illegal, more than doubled to 727 metric tons in 2010 from 2005 levels, overtaking coal-fired power plants as the main source of pollution from the metal.

The Minamata Convention on Mercury - named after the Japanese city where people were poisoned in the mid-20th century from industrial discharges of mercury - needs ratification from 50 countries and is expected to be formalized later this year.

The treaty requires governments to draw up national rules to comply and could take between three to five years to take effect.

As mercury, also known as quicksilver, is released to the air or washed into rivers and oceans, it spreads worldwide, and builds up in humans mostly through consumption of fish. The brains of fetuses and infants are particularly vulnerable to damage from mercury.

Officials said the financing required to bring in cleaner technology for industry and help developing countries come up with local solutions was one of the major sticking points of the six-day negotiations.

"Financing was agreed very early this morning and it was one of the most difficult aspects," said Lugris.

Japan, Norway and Switzerland have made initial pledges totaling $3 million in financing and an interim financial arrangement will be discussed in April by the Global Environment Facility, said Tim Kasten, head of the chemicals branch of UNEP.

Countries failed to agree on including vaccines where mercury is sometimes used as a preservative.

SOFT LANGUAGE?

While negotiators celebrated the deal reached after all-night talks in the fifth and final round of talks, the response from some non-governmental organizations (NGO) was more muted.

"The treaty will not bring immediate reductions of mercury emissions. It will need to be improved and strengthened, to make all fish safe to eat," said David Lennett from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

NGO IPEN, which aims to reduce the health risk of chemicals, described the language of the treaty as "soft" and "somewhat voluntary in nature" and said it was unlikely to result in a global reduction of mercury releases.

"Countries that do not want to do this can escape quite easily," said IPEN's Joe DiGangi.

In one notable climbdown, countries abandoned their goal of setting concrete targets for pollution levels from coal-fired power plants and cement factories, but negotiators said they would defer these discussions to a later meeting.

For mining, the treaty requires action from governments to reduce mercury use where artisanal and small-scale gold mining is "more than insignificant" but has no list of countries.

Alternatives to mercury in small mines are available, such as magnetic sluices, but developing countries have complained about the cost of implementation.

Many developing countries including Brazil and Mali strongly resisted attempts to limit imports of mercury, according to IPEN, because of the economic importance of small mines.

"The supply is still available, the practice of artisanal mining is still polluting and we are left with a mess at the end and there is no funding to clean it up," said DiGangi.

Artisanal and small gold mines now account for around 35 percent of global mercury pollution, according to a study by the U.N. Environment Programme published last week.

Other NGOs welcomed the number of products included in the treaty.

"The list of products was much longer than we expected," said Elena Lymberidi-Settimo, a coordinator at Zero Mercury Working Group. "The treaty sends the right market signal and will eventually lead to less exposure worldwide."

Many nations have already tightened laws - the United States barred exports of mercury from January 1, 2013. The European Union, until 2008 the main global exporter, barred exports of the liquid metal in 2011.

(Reporting by Emma Farge and Tom Miles; Editing by Sophie Hares)

"There is no truth to rumors of plans for Sundance Institute to host a film festival in Brooklyn in the immediate future," a spokeswoman for the Sundance Institute, which runs the Park City, Utah, festival said.

The denial came in response to a Page Six item in the New York Post that said the festival was looking at opportunities to host events in the Brooklyn neighborhood of DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass).

Unnamed sources told the Post that Sundance was exploring the possibility of doing everything from hosting a screening series to running a full festival.

The article intimated that the possible move was an incursion on the turf of the Tribeca Film Festival, which has established a foothold in lower Manhattan since kicking off more than a decade ago.

The spokesperson for Sundance noted that the festival sponsors many events across the country and the world, and it is always looking for opportunities to expand. But, she said, it is focused right now on its 2013 indie film festival that kicks off next week.

A spokeswoman for Tribeca did not immediately respond to request for comment.

At a meeting with representatives from major federal departments, the commission of academics, law enforcement officials and others, issued 56 recommendations to help child victims, including expanded training for social workers.

Torre, whose own childhood with an abusive father led him to start a charitable foundation focusing on the issue of child abuse, said many social workers and law-enforcement officials simply did not know how to spot signs of domestic abuse.

"I don't think society knows how to react, even if they think something's going on," said Torre, who won four World Series championships with the Yankees and is now an executive in Major League Baseball.

The failure of Penn State University to report former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky for child abuse - charges Sandusky was convicted of this year - was one example, Torre said.

The commission, set up by the Justice Department and known as the Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence, has held hearings for the past year. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has made the issue a priority.

Banging his fist on a table for emphasis, Holder told the commission its ideas would not sit on a shelf gathering dust, and that he would push the White House for support.

"The Justice Department is a big organization with a lot of tentacles in a lot of places, and my hope is to use the time I have as attorney general to continue the effort," Holder said at a news conference after the meeting.

President Barack Obama has not said whether he wants Holder to serve into a second term, though Holder is expected to stay on as the chief U.S. law enforcement official at least into early 2013.

Holder said there was a moral imperative for the U.S. government to support child victims - whether they have witnessed violence at home, in gangs or elsewhere - and a financial incentive to do so if those children are kept off a path to crime.

(Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by David Brunnstrom)

Gun control advocates and their allies in the state General Assembly want to pass new restrictions on weapons while passions are still high over the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting rampage Dec. 14 that left 20 children and six women dead. But they are bracing for strong opposition.

Gun owners have packed statehouse hearings in recent years to oppose measures that would tighten the state's gun laws. And gun manufacturers such as Colt Manufacturing Co., which traces its history to a Hartford factory that Samuel Colt opened in 1855, have threatened in the past to leave Connecticut, taking hundreds of jobs with them, if certain requirements became law.

Malloy, a Democrat, became choked up when he mentioned Newtown in his State of the State Address on Wednesday, saying:"Let us do everything in our power to ensure that Connecticut never again suffers such a loss, that we take real steps to make our kids and our communities safer."

He offered no specific proposals, instead noting that an advisory panel he set up last week will issue recommendations in March on gun control, mental health treatment and other issues arising from the Newtown massacre.

Betty Gallo, a lobbyist for Connecticut Against Gun Violence, said the state has an opportunity to become a national model on gun control. She said she understands the governor is taking a comprehensive look at what could prevent another tragedy, but she and others worry about opposition.

"There are people who have gun manufacturers in their town who are truly worried about constituents' jobs," Gallo said. "We expect problems with retailers and manufacturers."

In addition to West Hartford-based Colt, Connecticut is home to the gun makers Sturm, Ruger & Co. and Mossberg & Sons. None of the companies responded to requests for comment.

Also, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association, is based in Newtown, only a few miles from the scene of the Sandy Hook shooting. A spokesman, Mike Bazinet, said it is taking part in the gun control dialogue led by Vice President Joe Biden but has not gotten involved on the state level.

"If we were asked to participate in any process that has as its goal the reduction of violence and the protection of our children, we as an industry would be pleased to take part in that process," Bazinet said.

Connecticut, whose legislature has long been controlled by Democrats, ranks among the states with the most stringent gun control laws, but proposals to make them stronger have run into strong resistance.

In 2009, a bill to require gun markings to make them easier to trace was dropped after Colt vice president Charlton Chen warned that the company would consider leaving if it became law. "Let us not make a mistake with the unintended consequences of driving businesses and jobs out of Connecticut," he said.

More recently, gun owners turned out in force at the Capitol last March to oppose legislation banning large-capacity ammunition magazines, such as those later used by gunman Adam Lanza in the Newtown massacre. The measure failed.

Robert Crook, executive director of the Coalition of Connecticut Sportsmen, said he has 35,000 members who represent a small portion of the 180,000 people with pistol permits in the state. He said 350 of them were prepared to testify last year against the bill banning large-capacity magazines.

He said school security should be a bigger priority than gun control, noting that the Newtown shooting was carried by a troubled young man who took his mother's weapons and was not a gun owner himself. But Crook added: "We're open to any rational suggestions that make common sense."

State Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, a Democrat and a longtime proponent of tougher gun laws, said he is hoping the political climate has changed since the tragedy.

"I'm hopeful that some people will recognize that not every gun regulation bill is a serious threat to the Second Amendment and that people will be a little more reasonable about accepting some reasonable regulation," he said.

House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero Jr., a Republican, said he expects lawmakers will find more common ground on the issue than people might expect.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo in neighboring New York is trying to put his state out front on gun control, coming out with a wide-ranging package of restrictions Wednesday in his State of the State Address.

He called for loopholes to be closed in a state ban on assault weapons and ammunition magazines that carry more than 10 bullets. The Democrat also wants to require holders of handgun licenses to undergo follow-ups to make sure they are still qualified to possess a weapon, and he is calling for increased sentences for certain gun crimes.

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Associated Press writers Susan Haigh and Stephen Singer contributed to this report.

The two men held talks at the White House and aides from both parties said they were optimistic an agreement was shaping up.

Though Obama and Boehner appeared to be edging closer to an agreement, substantial hurdles remain. Rank-and-file Republicans could have trouble with the tax increases on the wealthiest Americans that are likely to be part of any deal, while Obama could have a tough time selling spending cuts to his fellow Democrats.

Democratic Representative Chris Van Hollen, a member of the House leadership from Maryland, said he saw a 50 percent chance of putting an accord in place before January, when $600 billion worth of across-the-board tax increases and spending hikes are due to begin kicking in.

"I still think there's quite a ways to go before the finish line," he said.

But investors were cheered by signs of progress and the Standard & Poor's 500 index of U.S. stocks rose 1.19 percent.

Economists warn that going over the fiscal cliff could push the economy into recession.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said his chamber will wrap up work on the issue after Christmas.

"It appears that we're going to be coming back the day after Christmas to complete work on the fiscal cliff," he said on the Senate floor.

Boehner, the speaker of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, faces a crucial test on Tuesday morning when he is expected to brief House Republicans. He is not expected to bring any deal up for a vote unless a majority of the House's 241 Republicans support it.

Republicans have campaigned for decades on a promise to keep taxes low, but Boehner in recent days has edged closer to Obama's demand to raise tax rates on top earners. In return, Obama could back a measure that would slow the rate of growth of Social Security retirement benefits by changing the way they are measured against inflation, according to a Senate Democratic aide.

GETTING CLOSER ON TAXES

In a step toward an agreement, Boehner has put forward a tax increase for those earning over $1 million annually, while Obama wants that threshold set at $250,000. Republicans could probably stomach a tax hike on incomes above $500,000, a Republican aide said.

Boehner's latest proposal calls for $1 trillion in new tax revenue, which would come from raising rates and limiting deductions that the wealthiest can take. That is $400 billion less than the White House wants, but the gap between the two sides has narrowed by half in recent weeks.

If there are no strong objections, he could try to finalize the deal with Obama on Wednesday, a Republican aide said.

Both sides declined to say what Boehner and Obama discussed at the meeting, which was also attended by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

The White House said Boehner's latest proposal doesn't meet its standards.

"Thus far the president's proposal is the only proposal that we have seen that achieves the balance that is so necessary," White House spokesman Jay Carney said at a news briefing.

Republicans understand that the clock is ticking and they are confident that Boehner will get a deal they can support in the coming days, a senior House Republican aide said.

Republicans want substantial spending cuts in return for increased tax revenue, but any proposal to trim popular benefit programs like the Medicare health insurance plan for seniors will face fierce resistance from liberal Democrats, whose votes will be needed to get a deal passed.

Obama could also face strong opposition from Democrats if he agrees to Boehner's proposal to slow the growth of Social Security benefits by changing the way the cost-of-living increases are measured against inflation, an approach that could save $200 billion over 10 years.

Obama also wants to head off another confrontation over the government's debt limit, which will need to be raised in the coming months. Republicans insist that any increase in the government's $16.4 trillion borrowing authority must be paired with an equal reduction in spending.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro, Mark Felsenthal, Rachelle Younglai and Jeff Mason; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Alistair Bell and Eric Beech)

So what happened? The Obama campaign focused strategically on offering specific policies or programs that targeted the new demographics. This meant ensuring a government mandate to address immigration, the issues of single women, the concerns of Hispanic, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Americans, the supporters of trade unions, and ordinary folks struggling to find jobs or keep the ones they had.

suggested the importance of demographics. Obama captured 71 percent of the Latino vote, in contrast with only 23 percent for former Gov. Mitt Romney. The president garnered 93 percent of African-American men and 96 percent of African-American women. He won 73 percent of the Asian-American vote.

Indeed, electoral demographics have become the driving force of the past two presidential elections, a fulfillment of Peter Brimelow and Ed Rubensteins ,Demography is destiny in American politics. They forecast 2008 as the year when a shift in ethnic demographics would ensure the Republican Partys inexorable slide to minority status.

What, then, do the demographics of the 2012 presidential election indicate? As , nonwhites represented 28 percent of the 2012 electorate in contrast to just 20 percent in 2000. Obama received 80 percent of the nonwhite vote in both 2008 and 2012. White, male voters represented only 34 percent of the votes cast in the 2012 election as compared with 46 percent in 1972.

According to , white men chose Romney over Obama by 27 percent (62 percent to 35 percent). Caucasian women voted for Romney over Obama by 56 percent to 42 percent, a higher percentage than those who voted for either McCain in 2008 or Bush in 2004.

Today, according to Benac and Cass, 54 percent of single women vote Democratic, in contrast to 36 percent of married women. The single womens vote was strategically significant since it accounted for nearly a quarter of all voters (23 percent) in the election.

White voters favored less government (60 percent), Hispanics wanted more (58 percent), and, by comparison, blacks were the most interventionist of these ethnic groups (73 percent). Hispanics represented a significant and growing share of prospective voters in the Western battleground states.

In 2000, for instance, white voters constituted 80 percent of voters in Nevada. But by 2012 their percentage of the total vote had declined to 64 percent while the Hispanic vote had increased by 19 percent. Not surprisingly, 70 percent of Hispanics voted for Obama in Nevada.

The youth vote sided decisively with Obama, as Benac and Cass demonstrated. In the case of North Carolina, a battleground state that narrowly supported Romney, two-thirds of these voters supported Obama. Younger voters are also more ethnically diverse. Of all Americans under 30 who voted in the election, 58 percent are white as compared with 87 percent of seniors who voted.

Just how significant are these numbers? As , three-fifths of white voters selected Romney, equaling or exceeding the support that former Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush had received from white voters in 1980 and 1988, respectively. But if the white electorate was 87 percent of voters in 1992, by 2016 they will represent fewer than 70 percent of American voters.

As the demographic landscape of our country changes, even conservative strongholds such as Texas will be at risk. Ted Cruz, a newly elected senator from Texas, who campaigned from a secure-the-borders perspective,it this way to Lizza.

Obama and his team of advisers ran a tactically brilliant campaign. Obamas victory wasnt based on a narrative, because that would have exposed the economic failings of his administration.

Instead, the campaign demonized Mitt Romney by appealing to the diversity values of the Democratic rank and file while saturating the battleground states with attack ads. The party appealed to a multicultural mosaic: Hispanics, single women, African-Americans, ethnic minorities, young people, as well as many of the economically disenfranchised who voted, a significant number of affluent progressives, and, of course, the LGBT community.

The Democrats strategically targeted their demographic, and the demographic became the narrative. In sports parlance, as I have noted on , Obamas ground game was hard-hitting and decisive. The demonization against Romney began early and never stopped. Even before he was the designated Republican candidate, the Obama machine had Romney effectively in their sights. All is fair in political warfare. And this Democratic victory was supremely won.

Dr. Diana E. Sheets, an iFoundry Fellow and Research Scholar at the University of Illinois, writes literary criticism, political commentary, and fiction. You can view her work at www.LiteraryGulag.com.