Popular Vote 2012 Results: Breakdown by Marital Status, Age, Religion, Gender

Until the popular vote is fully counted and the totals are certified by each state's board of elections, we won't know exactly what this year's electorate looked like. But we can glean a great deal of information from exit polling.

In total, about 122 million people voted in this year's election.

Barack Obama won about 50.6 percent of their votes, or just under 61 million. Mitt Romney won about 47.8 percent of the vote, just under 58 million, but Obama's margin could grow to more than 3 percent once all the votes are in.

As in 2008, Obama won the women's vote by a large margin, taking 55 percent of female votes, andd he did it with the largest gender gap ever recorded--18 percent.

But Obama lost the men's vote, receiving only 45 percent of votes cast by men, unlike in 2008, when he also carried the male vote.

Romney did very well among white voters, with nearly 60 percent voting for him, but recent demographic shifts meant that wasn't enough for him to win. Obama carried minorities by a huge margin.

Over 93 percent of African-Americans voted for Obama this year, as well as 73 percent of Asian-Americans and 71 percent of Latinos.

Latinos voters in particular were a problem for Romney, and the Republicans, as their share of the electorate continues to grow, and they were crucial in winning important swing states for Obama, like Nevada, Colorado and Florida, and are the main reason New Mexico is now a solidly Democratic state.

Obama continued his winning streak among minorities by taking the vast majority of votes by gay people. It's actually a bit surprising that Obama only won 76 percent of the votes cast by gay people, lesbians and bisexuals. A full 22 percent of LGBT voters supported Romney, despite open hostility from many facets of the Republican party and Democratic support for gay marriage initiatives in four states.

Older voters went for Romney, and the younger the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Obama. Voters 40 and over favored Romney, and those 39 and under favored Obama.

Contrary to Republican predictions, turnout among young voters was actually slightly higher this year than in 2008, as was African-American turnout.

Married voters favored Romney by a wide margin, supporting him over Obama by 14 points. That's probably less a statement on the effect either candidate has on marriage as it is indicative of the fact that older, whiter, more religious people tend to marry at higher rates.

And that's another Republican constituency that's dwindling. This year, married people cast 60 percent of the votes, while it was 66 percent in 2008.

In an interesting result, level of education seemed to make little difference in a particular voter's preference. Obama led Romney by only 2 points among college graduates, 50 percent to 48 percent, almost exactly the result in the general population.

And Obama only did 1 point better among voters who don't have a college degree.

In fact, the more education a voter had, the more likely they were to vote for Romney, to a point, though the gap never increased beyond 4 points. However, among voters with the highest levels of education, those with schooling beyond the undergraduate level, support for Obama jumps to 55 percent, and drops to 42 percent for Romney, a 13-point gap not seen where else along that spectrum.

Turnout in every swing state except Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire was up, though it was down nearly 10 percent in the rest of the country.

New York and New Jersey also saw declines of around 15 percent due to Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath.

As one might assume from the campaign, the higher a voter's income, the more likely they were to vote for Romney. He won 54 percent of the votes of people making more than $100,000 a year.

His support only dropped by 2 points among voters making between $50,000 and $100,000 a year.

Obama, however, won 60 percent of the votes of people who make less than $50,000 a year, and that group comprised 41 percent of the electorate. The median income in the United States is about $45,000 per year.

Surprisingly, religious voters didn't favor Romney, when taken as a whole. Protestants did favor Romney, by 57 percent, a figure that jumped to 78 percent when just looking at self-identified born-again Christians, usually called evangelicals.

But 50 percent of Catholics voted for Obama, even with the Democratic party opposed to the Catholic Church on abortion.

And Obama's support jumped to 74 percent among religious voters of other religions, including Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and pagans.

In fact, non-Christian religious voters went for Obama more reliably than non-religious voters. Still 70 percent of non-religious voters supported Obama, but 26 percent of them voted for Romney.