1. Barack Obama is the first US President since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win re-election with unemployment above 7.2 per cent. The jobless rate is currently 7.9 per cent, 0.7 per cent higher than the rate when Ronald Reagan won a second term in 1984. Roosevelt secured re-election in 1936 with unemployment at 16.6 per cent.

2. Based on exit polls [2], Obama won 93 per cent of the black vote, 73 per cent of the Asian vote, 71 per cent of the Hispanic vote and 39 per cent of the white vote. Nate Silver notes [3] that "forty-five percent of those who voted for Mr. Obama were racial minorities, a record number".

3. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are the first presidential ticket to lose both candidates' home states (Massachusetts and Wisconsin) since 1972 Democrat candidates George McGovern (South Dakota) and Sargent Shriver (Maryland).

4. Defying conservative predictions [4] that he would win the Electoral College but lose the popular vote, Obama currently has 58,532,508 votes (50.2 per cent) to Romney's 56,353,802 (48.2 per cent).

5. Obama's re-election marks the first time the US has had three two-term presidencies in a row since Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe.

6. As the Democrats quipped, "we've got ballots full of women". It was the female half of the US population that secured Obama's re-election, voting by 55 per cent to 44 per cent for the US president. Men, by contrast, voted for Romney by 52 per cent to 45 per cent.

7. The Democrats have won the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections (1992, 1996, 2000, 2008 and 2012). Al Gore won the popular vote against George W. Bush in 2000 by 543,895 (0.5 per cent) but lost the Electoral College to Bush by five votes (271 to 266).

8. Obama polled strongest among 18-29-year-olds (60 per cent), whilist Romney polled strongest among the over-65s (56 per cent).

9. Fifty six per cent of self-described "moderates" voted for Obama along with 86 per cent of liberals. Eighty two per cent of conservatives voted for Romney.

10. Obama's victory tweet [5] - "Four more years" - has had 563,281 retweets and 189,641 favourites, making it the most popular tweet ever.