2008 United States presidential election

• 1. Introduction

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  Shortly before midnight Eastern Time on the 4th of November 2008, Barack Obama stepped onto a stage in Grant Park, Chicago, and faced a crowd of 250,000 people. The 2008 United States presidential election had just been decided in his favor. When his victory speech ended, spontaneous street parties broke out in Philadelphia, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami and Los Angeles, among many other American cities. Celebrations also appeared in London, Berlin, Toronto, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney and Nairobi. One of them took place in a Japanese town that happens to share the candidate's name.

  How had a junior senator from Illinois reached that stage, when his own party's initial front-runner stood in his way for months? What made the Republican nominee, a veteran senator from Arizona, lose so decisively? And how did an unpopular outgoing president, a running mate from Alaska and a collapsing financial system shape the voters' choice? The answers begin long before election night.

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• 2. Clinton Versus Obama

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  Senator John Edwards moved first, announcing his candidacy on the 28th of December 2006 in what would be his second attempt at the presidency. Hillary Clinton declared her intention to run on the 20th of January 2007. Barack Obama joined them on the 10th of February in his home state of Illinois. Early polls, taken before anyone had formally entered, already showed Clinton and Obama as the most popular potential Democratic candidates. Commentators also floated Al Gore, John Kerry, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, Tom Vilsack and Evan Bayh.

  Iowa changed the picture. Obama climbed past Clinton in the state's polls and then won the caucus, with Edwards second and Clinton third. First-time caucus-goers and independents powered the result, and they saw him as the candidate of change. Biden and Connecticut senator Chris Dodd withdrew soon afterward. Clinton's team had no strategy beyond the early contests. According to The Vancouver Sun, her strategists had mapped a route to wrapping up the nomination by Super Tuesday on the 5th of February.

  Then New Hampshire confounded the pollsters. Obama's numbers had skyrocketed after Iowa, and surveys consistently had Clinton trailing in the days before the vote. She delivered strong performances at debates hosted by Saint Anselm College, ABC and Facebook, and gave an emotional interview broadcast live. She won the primary by 2% of the vote. That made her the first woman to win a major party's presidential primary for the purposes of delegate selection. Edwards finished third in both New Hampshire and South Carolina, and on the 30th of January 2008 he suspended his campaign without endorsing anyone.

  Super Tuesday, the 5th of February 2008, brought the largest number of simultaneous state primaries ever held. Across the 23 states with Democratic contests, Obama collected 847 delegates to Clinton's 834, a virtual tie. California, the biggest prize, went to Clinton by 8.3%, even though Obama had trailed there by an average of 6.0% in the polls. Some analysts credited a large Latino turnout. Obama then won every contest held in the rest of February, including Louisiana, Nebraska, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Maryland and Virginia, for ten consecutive victories.

  On the 4th of March, Clinton carried Ohio and Rhode Island. Some observers called Ohio a surprise upset, even though she had led the polling averages there. She also won the Texas primary, but Obama won the Texas caucuses held the same day and netted more delegates from the state. Pennsylvania followed on the 22nd of April. Obama outspent Clinton three to one there, yet she won with roughly 55% of the vote. His remark at a San Francisco fundraiser that small-town Americans “cling” to guns and religion drew sharp criticism from her campaign. Ron Elving of NPR noted that the closed primary drew an electorate older, whiter, more Catholic and more working-class than most earlier primaries.

  The 6th of May brought Indiana and North Carolina. Obama beat his polling numbers by several points in both, winning North Carolina by a wide margin and losing Indiana by only 1.1%, 50.56% to 49.44%. Most pundits then judged a Clinton nomination increasingly improbable, if not impossible. Her narrow Indiana win kept the campaign alive for another month. She went on to win most of the remaining primaries, but could not erase his delegate lead.

  A separate fight concerned Florida and Michigan. Both parties had barred states from moving their primaries earlier in the calendar, and the Democratic penalty was complete exclusion of the offending delegates from the national convention. Clinton won majorities of delegates and votes in both states, though 40% of Michigan voters chose uncommitted. She led a push to seat every delegate. On the 31st of May 2008, the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee compromised by seating both delegations at the August convention with half a vote each.

  Obama finally clinched the nomination on the 3rd of June, after a campaign against Clinton that had lasted 17 months. Superdelegates, most of whom had withheld their support until the primaries ended, helped carry him over the line. He had won the most states, while Clinton had won majorities in several of the larger ones. By May she was claiming a lead in the popular vote, but the Associated Press found her figures were accurate only in one close scenario. She signaled the end in a speech in New York on the 3rd of June, yet she refused to concede for several days. She conceded on the 7th of June and pledged her full support. Obama chose as his running mate Joe Biden, the Delaware senator who had himself dropped out after Iowa. Eight years later, Clinton became the Democratic nominee and lost the general election to Donald Trump.

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• 3. The Republican Scramble

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  The Republicans faced a rare vacuum. Vice President Dick Cheney chose not to seek the nomination, and President George W. Bush was barred from a third term by the Twenty-second Amendment. No election since 1952 had lacked both the incumbent president and vice president on the general election ballot. None since 1928 had lacked both in the nomination race. With no member of the Bush administration emerging as a major contender, the Republican contest was as open as the Democratic one.

  In November 2006, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani led the polls, with Arizona senator John McCain close behind. Commentators guessed that Giuliani's pro-choice stance on abortion would hurt him, and that McCain's age and support for the unpopular Iraq War would hurt him. Giuliani stayed the frontrunner through most of 2007. McCain made his candidacy official on the 1st of March 2007, after several informal announcements.

  Mike Huckabee won Iowa with little or no money, hoping only for a third-place finish in New Hampshire. McCain displaced Giuliani and Mitt Romney as the front runner there. It was a turnaround victory for a man the pundits had written off, who had been polling in single digits less than a month earlier. A narrow win over Huckabee in South Carolina followed. Michigan and Florida had moved their primaries into January against party rules, so Republicans stripped each of half its delegates, and the race turned to them. On the 29th of January McCain beat Romney in Florida's closed primary. Giuliani, weighed down by several scandals and no early wins, finished third there. He conceded and endorsed McCain the next day.

  California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsed McCain in February, just before the state's Super Tuesday primary, which offered more delegates than any other. McCain won his home state of Arizona, taking all 53 delegates, and nearly all of California's 173. Together with seven other states, that gave him 574 delegates for the day. Huckabee, the surprise performer, took 5 states and 218 delegates, and Romney won 7 states and 231. Two days later Romney suspended his campaign. He said that staying in would “forestall the launch of a national campaign and be making it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win.” He endorsed McCain on the 14th of February.

  Huckabee still won Louisiana and Kansas that month. In March, McCain swept Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island, which carried him past the 1,191 delegates required. Huckabee conceded, leaving Ron Paul, who held just 16 delegates, as his only remaining opponent. Four years later, Romney would win the Republican nomination himself and lose to Barack Obama.

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• 4. Bush's Long Shadow

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  By the day Obama was elected, George W. Bush's approval rating sat in the low to mid 20s, and his disapproval ran in the high 60s and even the low 70s in some polls. Across the campaign, surveys averaged his approval at around 30%. His slide, which had begun by late 2005, was attributed to the Iraq War, his response to Hurricane Katrina, the Abu Ghraib torture controversy and the 2008 financial crisis.

  Until the financial crisis took over, Iraq was the campaign's central issue. Obama's early and strong opposition to the war had helped him stand out from other Democrats in the primaries, and from a war-weary electorate in the fall. McCain supported the war. He also said the United States might remain in Iraq for as much as the next 50 to 100 years. He meant a peacetime presence like the one kept in Germany and Japan after World War II, but the remark proved costly, because Obama used it to tie him to Bush. McCain backed the troop surge led by General David Petraeus, one of several factors credited with improving security. He argued that this showed his superior judgment. Obama replied that no surge would have been needed had there been no war.

  The candidates also pitched different qualities. Obama campaigned on the theme that “Washington must change,” while McCain emphasized his experience. The general electorate split more evenly between change and experience than Democratic primary voters, who favored change by nearly 2-1. Yet final polling showed that voters saw Obama's inexperience as less of an obstacle than McCain's association with Bush. The Obama campaign framed that association throughout the season as “more of the same.”

  McCain tried to create distance. Democrats had met in Denver in late August, and Republicans gathered in Saint Paul in early September. Bush had endorsed McCain at the White House in March, but he never made a single appearance for him on the trail. He addressed the Republican convention only by live video, staying away in person because of disasters in the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Gustav. McCain pointed to disagreements with the president on other key issues, climate change among them. Obama's ads and rallies answered by citing an interview in which McCain said he voted with Bush 90% of the time. Congressional voting records supported that figure for the years Bush was in office.

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• 5. Age and Palin

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  John McCain turned 72 in August 2008, and critics asked whether a man who would be 80 at the end of two full terms should be president. The oldest president so far, Ronald Reagan, had been a month shy of 78 when he left office in January 1989. Obama was nearly twenty-five years younger than McCain. McCain was born before World War II, in the Silent Generation, and would have been the first president born in the 1930s. He also lived with the lingering effects of his captivity in North Vietnam and reportedly had difficulty lifting his arms above his head.

  McCain answered by releasing all of his medical records, something Obama did not do. His wife Cindy said they had hiked the Grand Canyon the previous summer and that her husband “did great and had no trouble keeping up with us.” He also appeared at several campaign stops with his still-active 95-year-old mother. Pennsylvania congressman John Murtha was blunt. He said, “Seven presidents have come and gone since I've been in Congress, and I saw the toll the job took on each one of them.” McCain died in 2018, one year after Obama's second term ended.

  Obama never raised the age issue directly. He preferred to call McCain's ideas “old” and “old hat.” During the primaries he had recalled the feud between the Clintons and Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, comparing it to old quarrels from college campuses, and declared, “It's time for a new generation to take over.” His active use of a Blackberry contrasted with McCain's admission that he rarely used email or the internet. McCain's service in Vietnam appealed to baby boomers, but younger voters called it “unimportant.”

  McCain's answer to the age question was Sarah Palin, a first-term Alaska governor who had held that office only since 2006. Before that she had served as a council member and mayor of Wasilla. The pick was controversial, but it seemed to solve two problems. A younger vice president would succeed him if he died or became incapacitated, and she appealed to right-wing conservatives, who had been comparatively unmoved by McCain. She also came across as more down-to-earth than McCain, who was widely criticized as a “Beltway insider.”

  The problems arrived quickly. Media interviews suggested that Palin lacked knowledge on certain key issues, and many voters doubted her qualifications. Given McCain's age, the odds of her reaching the presidency were higher than normal. “One 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency” became a popular anti-Republican slogan. Critics also seized on her 17-year-old daughter giving birth to a child out of wedlock, and on her enthusiasm for hunting moose and other animals. Pundits worried that her conservative views would alienate independents and moderates, the two groups McCain needed.

  One phrase turned into a skirmish of its own. At the Republican convention, Palin joked that the only difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick. Later Obama said that any change McCain offered from Bush's policies amounted to “lipstick on a pig,” meaning the underlying policies stayed the same. Some called the line sexist, reading it as a jab at Palin.

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• 6. Crisis and Debates

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  Exit polls on Election Day and surveys through the final months agreed that the economy was voters' top concern. In the fall of 2008, many news sources described the most serious downturn since the Great Depression. Voters who named the economy as their main issue made up 63% of the electorate, and they favored Obama 53% to 44%.

  On the 20th of August, McCain told Politico that he was unsure how many houses he and Cindy owned and that his staff would get back to the reporter. Obama's campaign ad “Seven” and his stump speeches used the slip to portray McCain as unable to relate to ordinary Americans. On the 15th of September, the day Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, McCain stood at a morning rally in Jacksonville, Florida. He declared that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong,” even as he acknowledged tremendous turmoil in the financial markets. Voters perceived the opposite, and the comment appeared to cost him.

  On the 24th of September, McCain announced that he was suspending his campaign to return to Washington and help craft a $700 billion bailout package for the financial industry. He said he would not debate Obama until Congress passed it. Reports portrayed him as playing no significant role in the talks, and the first version of the bill fell short in the House. He reversed course and attended the first debate on the 26th of September anyway. Both moves made him look erratic. Days later a second version passed the House and Senate, with Obama, Biden, McCain and Clinton all voting for it. Many pundits and analysts argue that the crisis itself, more than any single misstep, caused McCain's sharp drop in support in mid-September.

  Health care showed a plain contrast between the nominees. McCain favored open-market competition over government funding. His plan offered tax credits of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families without employer coverage, plus a “Guaranteed Access Plan” built with states for people denied coverage over pre-existing conditions. Obama called for universal coverage through a National Health Insurance Exchange offering private plans and a Medicare-like government option. Under it, coverage and premiums could not depend on health status. Parents would have to cover their children, but adults would not be required to buy insurance. A poll released in early November found Obama supporters ranking health care as their second priority, while McCain supporters ranked it fourth.

  The Commission on Presidential Debates sponsored four debates in September and October. The first was the 26th of September at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, moderated by Jim Lehrer of PBS, and drew 52.4 million viewers. The vice-presidential debate came on the 3rd of October at Washington University in St. Louis, where Gwen Ifill of PBS moderated Biden against Palin. It drew 69.9 million viewers, the largest audience of the four. Tom Brokaw of NBC moderated the 7th of October debate at Belmont University in Nashville, watched by 63.2 million. During that one, McCain referred to Obama as “that one.” The finale was the 15th of October at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, moderated by Bob Schieffer of CBS, with 56.5 million viewers.

  A fifth event on the 19th of October, hosted by Columbia University's political union, invited every candidate who could theoretically win 270 electoral votes. Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney and Chuck Baldwin agreed to attend, and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! moderated. C-SPAN carried it on cable, and Break-the-Matrix streamed it online.

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• 7. Money, Web and Disputes

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  In January 2007, Federal Election Commission chairman Michael E. Toner predicted a $1 billion election and said a serious candidate would need at least $100 million by the end of that year. One tally put combined Democratic and Republican spending, covering primaries, conventions and general elections, at $448.9 million in 1996, $649.5 million in 2000 and $1.01 billion in 2004. By the 24th of November 2008, 148 candidates across all parties had raised $1,644,712,232 and spent $1,601,104,696. Obama raised $778,642,962 and spent $760,370,195, or $10.94 per vote. McCain raised $379,006,485 and spent $346,666,422, or $5.78 per vote.

  Much of that money came through screens. Howard Dean had raised large sums online in 2004, and in 2008 candidates went further through their own sites, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook. On the 16th of December 2007, Ron Paul collected $6 million in a single day of internet donations, a record for any presidential candidate. For the first time, a majority of the voting-age population preferred to get its news online, and pundits began judging candidates by their social media followings. Obama had over 2 million supporters on Facebook and 100,000 followers on Twitter, against McCain's 600,000 and 4,600. Obama's YouTube channel held 115,000 subscribers and more than 97 million video views.

  The Pew Internet and American Life project found that 35% of Americans relied on online video for election news and 10% used social networking sites. A later study found that 37% of Americans aged 18-24 got election news from social networks. The Republican Party was criticized for not reaching young voters online. Smear campaigns, once the work of fliers and phone banks, moved to the internet, and groups such as Brave New Films emerged to produce viral material.

  Disputes followed. Allegations of voter list purges using unlawful criteria drew controversy in at least six swing states: Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina. On the 5th of October, Montana's Republican lieutenant governor, John Bohlinger, accused his own state party of vote caging to purge 6,000 voters from three Democratic-leaning counties. In Michigan, a report said Republicans planned to challenge voters using lists of foreclosed homes, and Obama's campaign sued. Libertarian candidate Bob Barr sued in Texas to remove both Obama and McCain from the ballot over a missed filing deadline, and the Texas Supreme Court dismissed the suit without explanation.

  Ohio produced the strangest case. Both parties alleged that out-of-state people were moving in briefly to vote, despite a residency requirement of more than 29 days. The Franklin County Board of Elections referred 55 possible irregularities to the local prosecutor. Three groups drew notice, named Vote from Home, Vote Today Ohio and Drop Everything and Come to Ohio. Thirteen members of Vote from Home moved to the same spot in eastern Columbus. Their organizer, Marc Gustafson, and others, including scholars studying at Oxford, settled with prosecutor Ron O'Brien to withdraw their challenged ballots. Since 1953, only six people in Ohio had gone to prison for illegal voting.

  Critics also attacked the press. A Pew poll on the 22nd of October found that 70% of registered voters believed journalists wanted Obama to win, versus 9% for McCain. A post-election Pew survey found 67% thought the press covered Obama fairly, versus 53% for McCain. A study of 5,374 media narratives from the 1st of January through the 9th of March by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Harvard's Shorenstein Center found 69% favorable coverage for Obama and 67% for Clinton, but only 43% for McCain. Debate moderators took fire as well. Tim Russert was accused of tougher questioning of Clinton after asking her, but not Obama, to name Russia's new president, Dmitry Medvedev. Time magazine columnist Mark Halperin went furthest, describing the media's attitude toward Obama as “blind, almost slavish” worship.

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• 8. Night and Count

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  By 9:30 pm Eastern Standard Time on Election Day, a McCain victory had quickly become improbable. Obama had taken his home state of Illinois, the Northeast, and the critical battlegrounds of Ohio and Pennsylvania. He also carried Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota by double digits. Indiana went Democratic for only the second time since 1936, after 1964, which gave Obama all eight Great Lakes states. No candidate had done that since Richard Nixon in 1972. McCain held traditional Republican ground including the Dakotas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Montana, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming and Arizona.

  CNN and Fox News called Virginia for Obama shortly before 11:00 pm, leaving him 50 electoral votes short with only six West Coast states still voting. All the American networks called the election at 11:00 pm as West Coast polls closed. The tally stood at 297 for Obama and 146 for McCain, with 270 needed. McCain conceded half an hour later in his hometown of Phoenix. North Carolina and Missouri stayed undecided for several days. North Carolina went to Obama by 14,177 votes, and Missouri to McCain by just 3,903, the narrowest margin in the country. Nebraska's 2nd congressional district also gave Obama an electoral vote, in a state that splits them by district. The final count was 365 electoral votes to 173.

  Obama won 69,498,516 votes, or 52.93%, to McCain's 59,948,323, or 45.65%. Nine states flipped from Republican to Democratic: Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. Colorado was the tipping-point state for Obama's win. Iowa played that role for McCain. The county map told an odd story. McCain carried 2,270 of the 3,154 counties, districts and independent cities making returns, to Obama's 884. Congress certified the electoral vote on the 8th of January 2009.

  Turnout set a record. Roughly 131 million ballots were counted, up from 122.3 million in 2004. Depending on the estimate of eligible voters, that meant a turnout rate of 63.0% or 61.6%, the highest since 1960 or 1968 respectively. A report on the 6th of November from American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate had concluded that the expected surge failed to materialize. The later count topped its preliminary estimate of 126.5 to 128.5 million voters. African Americans made up 13.0% of the electorate, up from 11.1% in 2004, and over 95% of them voted for Obama. In North Carolina, 74% of registered Black voters turned out, against 69% of North Carolinians overall. Voters under 35 backed Obama heavily, while McCain was most popular with those over 60. First-time voters, 11% of the total, chose Obama 69% to 30%.

  The result carried several firsts. Obama, whose mother was white and whose father was a Kenyan of the Luo ethnic group, became the first African American and the first biracial president. Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Lenora Fulani, Carol Moseley Braun, Alan Keyes and Al Sharpton had run before him, but none had won a major party's nomination. His ticket was also the first winning one in which neither candidate was a white Protestant. Biden became the first Roman Catholic elected vice president, after Catholic vice-presidential candidates lost in 1964-1972 and 1984. Obama was the first Democrat to win a majority of the popular vote since Jimmy Carter in 1976, and the first Northern Democrat elected president since John F. Kennedy.

  The ballot itself held surprises. Ralph Nader ran as an independent and took 739,034 votes. Bob Barr of the Libertarians won 523,715, Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party 199,750, and Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party 161,797. Only the 1992 election had listed more presidential candidates in at least one state, with 23 names. Nevada voters cast 6,267 votes for “None of These Candidates.” Write-ins included 62 votes for Santa Claus across ten states and 11 for Mickey Mouse across five. Among the 17 states that tally unlisted names, 112,597 miscellaneous write-ins were recorded, an unusually high number for a presidential race.

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