Democratic

Republic

Incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama and Democratic Vice-President Joe Biden are running for a second term during this election, the former being constitutionally limited to only two terms.

The Republican Party nominees are Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and his running mate vice-presidential candidate Congressman Paul Ryan.

Incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama born August 4, 1961. He is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office.

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, running unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives in 2000.

Several events earned Obama national attention during his campaign to represent the State of Illinois in the United States Senate in 2004, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won the Senate election in November 2004, serving until his resignation following his 2008 presidential election victory. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close race in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In April 2011, he announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012.

As president, Obama signed economic stimulus legislation in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 in response to the 2007–2009 recession in the United States. Other major domestic policy initiatives include the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, and the Budget Control Act of 2011 which raised the debt ceiling. In foreign policy, Obama ended US military involvement in the Iraq War, increased troop levels in Afghanistan, signed the New START arms control treaty with Russia, ordered U.S. military involvement in Libya, and ordered the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. In May 2012, he became the first sitting U.S. president to publicly support legalizing same-sex marriage. Incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama and Democratic Vice-President Joe Biden are running for a second term during this election

Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American businessman and the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 election. From 2003 to 2007, he served as the 70th Governor of Massachusetts.

Raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan by his parents Lenore and George W. Romney, Mitt Romney spent two and a half years in France as a Mormon missionary starting in 1966. He married Ann Davies in 1969, with whom he has had five children. By 1971, Romney had participated in the political campaigns of both his parents. In that year, he earned a Bachelor of Arts from Brigham Young and in 1975, a joint Juris Doctor and Master of Business Administration from Harvard. Romney then entered the management consulting industry and in 1977 he secured a position at Bain & Company. Later serving as its chief executive officer, he helped lead the company out of financial crisis. In 1984, he cofounded and led the spin-off company Bain Capital, a highly profitable private equity investment firm that became one of the largest of its kind in the nation. His considerable net worth, estimated in 2012 at $190–250 million, helped finance his prior political campaigns.

Active in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Romney served during his business career as the bishop of his ward (head of his local congregation) and then stake president in his home area near Boston. After stepping down from Bain Capital and his local leadership role in the church, he ran as the Republican candidate in the 1994 Massachusetts election for U.S. Senate. Upon losing to longtime incumbent Ted Kennedy, he resumed his position at Bain Capital. Years later, a successful stint as President and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics led to a relaunch of his political career.

Elected Governor of Massachusetts in 2002, Romney helped develop and enact into law the Massachusetts health care reform legislation, the first of its kind in the nation, which provided near-universal health insurance access through state-level subsidies and individual mandates to purchase insurance. He also presided over the elimination of a projected $1.2–1.5 billion deficit through a combination of spending cuts, increased fees, and the closure of corporate tax loopholes. Former Governor Romney and his running mate vice-presidential candidate Congressman Paul Ryan is in the November 2012 general election.

See the 3 debates for more information via youtube in below.

Sources: Youtube, Wikipedia, Yahoo
catch4all.com, Sandra Englund, October 23rd, 2012 Rev. Nov 1st, 2012