Why Romney Lost: A World Perspective

Look: The World Explains Why Romney Lost
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney concedes defeat to US President Barack Obama November 7, 2012 in Boston, Massachusetts. AFP PHOTO/EMMANUEL DUNAND (Photo credit should read EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images)
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney concedes defeat to US President Barack Obama November 7, 2012 in Boston, Massachusetts. AFP PHOTO/EMMANUEL DUNAND (Photo credit should read EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images)

As Obama supporters awoke on Wednesday to a blissful post-election victory, many in the Romney camp must have wondered: "What the hell went wrong this year?"

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said he and other Republican strategists “misunderstood what was happening in the country," Businessweek writes. Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots blamed Romney for being "a weak moderate candidate, hand-picked by the Beltway elites and country-club establishment wing of the Republican Party," the magazine adds.

Amid the post-election tumult in the United States, HuffPost World took a look at the explanations for Romney's loss cited abroad.

According to French newspaper Le Monde, Romney's loss in Florida should be a learning lesson for the Republican party. The Romney campaign's strategy of pounding the Sunshine State with negative ads clearly did not pay off, the newspaper writes, but points to the candidate's inability to embody a better future and seduce Hispanic voters.

Mitt's defeat already started during the primaries, the Italian daily La Stampa argued. The Republican candidate distanced himself from crucial moderate voters by making too many concessions to the religious right on social issues, the analysis says.

Spain's El Pais pointed to Obama's support among Hispanic voters to explain the Democratic win, and argued that Romney's op-ed in the New York Times 'Let Detroit Go Bankrupt’ and his 47 percent remarks significantly reduced the Republican's appeal.

Vincent Michelot, history professor in the Science Po university of Lyon, told French newspaper Liberation that he believed that if Romney had not succumbed to the Tea Party, the Republicans would have won a majority in both houses.

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