What do election results mean for next 4 years?

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) - There were officially 59 million Americans smiling Wednesday, offset by 57 million Americans who were not so happy.  

President Barack Obama will serve a second term in office. While the outcome is no longer in doubt, the real question is, what last night's results mean for the next four years.

Purdue Political Science Department Head Rosalee Clawson said it won't be easy for the incumbent.

"Obama is going to be faced with a Republican Congress so you're going to have issues of gridlock and issues of partisan bickering. But I do think there's an opportunity here," she said.

Immediately pressing is the so-called "fiscal cliff," a set of automatic deep spending cuts and tax increases that will happen if nothing is done by Jan. 1.

Clawson said bipartisanship may not be easy with polls showing Congressional approval hovering around 10 percent, combined with a president who barely got 50 percent of the popular vote.

"I'd like to be hopeful that different groups can come together and work together in a productive way," she added.  "I'm a little bit of a cynic on whether that's actually going to happen."

Clawson said there's lots for the president to tackle in his second term, most notably legislation dealing with the economy and job creation, along with implementation of the Affordable Care Act. But with recent events may make both parties willing to tackle global warming.

"We just saw Sandy. There were other issues, natural disasters that are occurring that make climate change very real to us so that's an issue that maybe will be worked on in the next four years," Clawson said.

But the biggest effect of Obama's second term may not be in the executive branch. Clawson said he may get to name one, perhaps two Supreme Court justices.

"That could reshape the court and leave the longest lasting legacy for Obama," she said.

Clawson said a second term will give the Republican Party on both a national and statewide level a chance to regroup. Because with the numbers of white voters shrinking, and particularly the numbers of Latino voters rising, the demographics of the American electorate are changing.

"If Republicans don't figure that out, they are going to be a minority party," she added.