Campaign finally admits defeat in Florida on Thursday, giving Obama a total of 332 electoral college votes to Romney's 206

Candidate's aides leaked preview of what would have been the website of President-elect Romney

'It's not going to happen', said Romney as aides urged him not to concede

The presidential election was often brutal and bitter, with both candidates' fierce desire to win being clear throughout the campaign.



But when it became clear that the race was over and Barack Obama had won, Mitt Romney accepted his defeat with grace, refusing to allow his staff to contest the results in key swing states, it was revealed today.

Republican aides were about to send four planes to oversee recount efforts in Ohio, Florida and Virginia, but the candidate stopped them, saying: 'It's not going to happen.'

The news comes as it has been revealed that the Romney campaign has conceded defeat in Florida, where counting continued today, giving Obama a total of 332 electoral college votes to Romney's 206.



But despite his landslide loss, Romney staff yesterday accidentally released the victory website which had been set up in anticipation of promoting his role as President-elect.

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It's over: Mitt Romney announced that he conceded the race to President Obama and stood on stage with his wife Ann, Paul and Janna Ryan



The final desperate moments of the GOP campaign have been revealed in an account by the New York Times , which described Romney holed up in his Boston hotel room at 11.30 on Tuesday night, minutes after news networks had declared Obama the winner.

Staff in Ohio, Florida and Virginia, three of the biggest swing states, were on the phone insisting that the races there were still too close to call and urging Romney not to concede. RELATED ARTICLES Previous

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Next Home at last! Victorious Obama returns to White House for... Republicans' problem with women: Twice as many unmarried... Mitt puts his feet up with his family as he prepares to fade... Boehner extends olive branch of compromise to Obama saying... Share this article Share Four aeroplanes were on stand-by ready to dispatch staff to launch legal battles over the tight results, while one of the candidate's closest confidants was about to tell his massed supporters that the race was not yet over. However, Romney himself declared that it was too late, saying 'It's not going to happen' as his wife Ann cried beside him. The day after his defeat, the candidate's 'body man' Garrett Jackson posted a picture of him enjoying his 'last peanut butter and honey sandwich aboard Air Romney', a touching pic of the final moments of his five-year campaign. On his own: Romney sitting on his plane eating his final peanut butter and honey sandwich of the campaign While the result in Florida was so close that no winner has yet been declared, Obama ended up winning comfortably by two points in Ohio and three in Virginia.

And even if all three states had gone Republican instead, the President would still have won in the electoral college with 272 votes to Romney's 266. On Thursday afternoon, the GOP campaign in Florida finally admitted that Obama would almost certainly win the state's 29 electoral votes. The President held a lead of around 56,000 votes in the state, with most of those yet to be counted coming from heavily democratic areas around big cities, leading a Romney spokesman to say: ' We thought based on our polling and range of organization that we had done what we needed to win.

'Obviously, we didn't, and for that I, and every other operative in Florida has a sick feeling that we left something on the table.'



Preemptive: The website was created with the assumption that Mitt Romney had won the White House



Read more here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2012/11/why-obama-wins-florida.html#storylink=cpy

With the end of Romney's campaign, he instantly lost all the perks of being a presidential candidate - above all the right to round-the-clock personal protection from the Secret Service.



As he was sleeping early on Wednesday morning, the mission to protect Romney and his family officially came to an end with the order: 'Javelin, Jockey details, all posts, discontinue,' according to an account from GQ .

After nine months of accompanying the candidate - codenamed Javelin - on his every move, the team of agents melted away overnight, leaving Romney's son Tagg to drive his father away from his campaign headquarters in Boston the next morning.



A supplementary team, 'Hawkeye Javelin', had been ready to swing into action had the GOP candidate won the election and needed additional protection.

Whatever the political persuasions of the agents accompanying Romney, they have at least one reason to be thankful for his loss.



If he had become President, 29 members of his family would have required some sort of Secret Service protection - and each would have to have been assigned a unique codename beginning with 'J'.

Planning prematurely: One of the pages was dedicated to the would-be inauguration

No clues: Little was revealed on the leaked site

Other aspects of the Romney also wrapped up quickly - his aides who tried to pay for late-night cabs on Wednesday morning found their official credit cards had been disabled, according to NBC News .



Many staffers who were on secondment from other GOP officials returned to Washington to start working for their permanent bosses instead, as the campaign headquarters were largely dismantled within just one day.



Mitt Romney for President will continue to exist as a legal entity for around two years, as the campaign repays its debts and fulfils regulatory obligations.

On Wednesday, Roll Call's Political Wire posted screen grabs of some of the pages from the website that Romney and Paul Ryan would have released had they won the election.

The homepage of the site has a seal of 'The Office of the President Elect' and had a quote on the top signed by President-Elect Mitt Romney.



'I'm excited about our prospects as a nation. My priority is putting people back to work in America,' the large quote says.

It shows links to information about the would-be inauguration (taking place in Washington, DC on January 21, 2013) and his vision of a 'smaller, simpler, smarter' America.

Recruiting for the cause: One of the pages was dedicated joining the Romney administration

There are three other pages, titled 'Join the Administration', 'The President-Elect' which goes into further detail about the inauguration, and 'The Nominees' which briefly describes the process of electing a cabinet.

Unfortunately for political junkies, the nominees page cuts off before any actual nominees are identified, so the page does not give any true insight into the way that the Romney-Ryan team would have proceeded with their transition.

Political Wire does not explain how they found the site or how long it was live, only saying that it was taken down quickly.

Considering aides presumably spent hours poring over transition plans, it is no surprise that they had a website prepared in case the election went their way.



Romney himself was very vocal about the fact that he had written only one speech for Tuesday night- a 1,118-word acceptance speech - and he had prepared no alternative.



The accidental release of the website came just hours after Romney took the stage in Boston to give his concession speech to a crowd of disappointed supporters.



No website needed: President Obama accepted his re-election in his hometown of Chicago

'Like so many of you, Paul and I have left everything on the field. We have given our all to this campaign,' he said during the speech.



'We look to Democrats and Republicans in government at all levels to put people before the politics.



'I believe in America. I believe in the people of America... I ran for office because I'm concerned about America. This election is over, but our principles endure.



'I so wish that I had been able to fulfill your hopes to lead the country in a different direction, but the nation chose another leader. And so Ann and I join with you to earnestly pray for him and for this great nation. Thank you, and God bless America. You guys are the best.'

VIDEO: Romney concedes defeat in the election...