It is likely to be remembered as one of the most consequential elections in recent memory—and not for a single reason but for a dozen.

Left, by Joe Raedle/Getty Images; right, by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Historians and political operatives will chew over the results of the 2012 election for decades to come, but here are just a few thoughts on the morning after.

The polls were wrong: they underestimated Barack Obama’s performance in the battleground states. In fact, the best of the polls were strikingly correct, portraying the president’s small but steady lead in most of the places he won. High ho, Nate Silver! Memo to the Republican pundit class and everyone else who should know better (that means you, Karl Rove): Hope is not a strategy. Wishing for an outcome does not create that outcome. Why such once respected analysts as Michael Barone summoned mysticism to predict Mitt Romney would romp in the Electoral College—when all data suggested that could not be so—is beyond understanding. David Plouffe, David Axelrod, Jim Messina, and Stephanie Cutter of the Obama high command will rank with the keenest political operatives of all time. Their massive, micro-targeted campaign and precision-crafted turnout operation did just what they said it would, and as Dizzy Dean used to say, “It ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up.”

The income Mitt Romney must most regret came not from the Cayman Islands but in the form of the piddling honorarium he took from The New York Times for that infamous op-ed piece “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”

For all his guffawing, and the guffawing at him, Joe Biden was a big help—literally. He stiffened the president’s spine on gay marriage (which energized the base) and got Mike Bloomberg’s last-minute endorsement (which may well have helped in Florida). All the heavy breathing about a popular-electoral vote split was mostly post-2000 P.T.S.D. Sure, the election was close, but the country is closely divided. There may yet be another Florida re-count, but it won’t matter. Bush v. Gore was a once-in-a-lifetime event. Trust me: I was there. The income Mitt Romney must most regret came not from the Cayman Islands but in the form of the piddling honorarium he took from The New York Times for that infamous op-ed piece “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” The odds that comprehensive immigration reform will pass Congress just skyrocketed, because even the most stubborn elected Republicans know they can no longer win national elections with older white guys alone. Like George W. Bush in 2004, Obama proved that a resourceful incumbent president can win re-election when the usual predictors (job-approval rating, right-track/wrong-track numbers) seem stacked against him. As the investment-ad disclaimers put it: Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Paul Ryan cannot be said to have helped his ticket in any discernible way, but it won’t hurt him a bit in positioning himself for a future presidential run. He is still exactly the sort of guy primary-voting Republicans like . . . if they like that sort of guy. There will be 20 women in the Senate that convenes in January, 10 times the number there were before voters went to the polls in 1992. Mitt Romney made a concession speech of surpassing grace, generosity, and largeness of spirit. If his party had allowed him to campaign that way, who knows what might have happened. His Republican colleagues—in Washington and elsewhere—would do well to follow his lead for once. Will they? Barack Obama now joins the select club of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Bill Clinton—the Democratic presidents who’ve won second terms in the last century. His reward? He has to govern a still-bitterly divided country for the next four years and grapple with problems he avoided—if not ignored—in his own campaign, beginning with the fiscal cliff. Finally, it’s hard not to think of a letter written 56 years ago by Obama’s fellow Illinoisan, Adlai Stevenson, who had just lost his second race for the White House. “While defeated, I don’t feel in the least bruised,” Stevenson wrote a friend, before summing up his political philosophy this way: