2008 Presidential Election
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "2008_Presidential_Election".

‹ 2004  2012 ›
United States presidential election, 2008
November 4, 2008
Nominee		Barack Obama	John McCain
Party		Democratic	Republican
Home state		Illinois	Arizona
Running mate		Joe Biden	Sarah Palin
Electoral vote		365 (projected)	162 (projected)
States carried		28+DC+NE-02	21
Popular vote		66,882,230	58,343,671
Percentage		52.7%	46.0%
Presidential election results map. Red denotes states/districts won by McCain/Palin, Blue denotes those won by Obama/Biden, Gray denotes those states not yet decided. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state. Obama won one electoral vote from Nebraska's 2nd congressional district while McCain won the other four of the state's electoral votes. Missouri has not been projected for either candidate.
Incumbent President George W. Bush Republican President-Elect Barack Obama Democratic

Wikinews has 2008 United States presidential election news:

• November 9: Gay marriage banned in three states; other ballot measures decided
• November 7: World leaders react to Obama's victory
• November 6: Barack Obama elected 44th President of the United States
• November 4: Fear and loathing on the campaign trail, October 2008
• November 4: US voters go to the polls

The United States presidential election of 2008, was held on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, the junior United States Senator from Illinois won decisively, based on states' popular-vote tabulations and their expected effect on the electoral vote to be cast December 15. The Republican Party's nominee was John McCain, the senior United States Senator from Arizona. Minor party candidates were the Libertarian Party's former Congressman Bob Barr; the Constitution Party's pastor and radio talk show host Chuck Baldwin; and the Green Party's former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. Ralph Nader declined to seek the Green Party nomination and ran as an independent candidate.

It was the 56th consecutive quadrennial United States presidential election. The selected electors from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia will vote for President and the Vice President of the United States on December 15, 2008.

The 2008 election was the first time in U.S. history that an African American was elected President and the first that an African American was a presidential nominee for a major party.¹ It was also the first time two sitting senators ran against each other. Since the Republican nominee for vice-president was a woman, Governor Sarah Palin, either winning ticket would have been historic, as no woman has been elected vice-president. Senator Joe Biden is the first Roman Catholic to be elected vice-president.

The election coincided with the 2008 Senate elections in thirty-three states, House of Representatives elections in all Congressional districts, and gubernatorial elections in eleven states, as well as various state referenda and local elections.

Characteristics

Leading candidates were senators

For the first time in history, both major party nominees were sitting United States Senators: Republican candidate John McCain (Arizona) and Democratic candidate Barack Obama (Illinois).² The 2008 election marked the first time since the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 that a sitting Senator was elected President of the United States, and the third time in American history (Warren G. Harding in 1920 was the first). It was also the second time in American history, after the election of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1960, that the successful presidential and vice-presidential candidates (Barack Obama and Joe Biden) were both sitting Senators. With Obama's victory, Biden, having been a Senator since January 1973 and having served for the past 36 years, became the longest-serving Senator in history to become Vice President. For his part, McCain would have, if elected, become the first prisoner-of-war since Andrew Jackson to become President as well as the first to become President after having won at least four Senate terms. (Senator John Kerry was the Democratic nominee in 2004 during his fourth Senate term.)

Leading candidates' origins

Either major party candidate would have become the first president born outside the continental United States, as Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and McCain was born at Coco Solo, Panama Canal Zone, a U.S. naval base. A bipartisan legal review agreed that McCain, if not born a natural-born citizen, was in 1937 "retroactively rendered... a natural born citizen, if he was not one already" of the United States; being a natural-born citizen is a constitutional requirement to become president.³ Obama, having a white mother and Kenyan father of the Luo ethnic group⁴ will be the first African-American, bi-racial president. McCain would have been the first president from Arizona. Obama will be the third president elected from Illinois, the first two being Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant⁵ (Ronald Reagan was born in Illinois, but was a former governor of California). The last candidates to run from these states were Adlai Stevenson (D) of Illinois, who ran and lost in 1952 and 1956, and Barry Goldwater (R) of Arizona, who ran and lost in 1964. Obama will become the first president born in Hawaii.

Leading candidates' ages

Barack Obama and John McCain are 24 years and 340 days apart in age. This is the largest age disparity between the two major party presidential candidates, surpassing Bill Clinton and Bob Dole (23 years and 28 days apart in age) who ran against each other in the 1996 presidential election. Had McCain been elected president, he would have been the oldest U.S. president upon ascension to the presidency at age 72 years and 144 days,⁶ and the second-oldest president to be inaugurated (Ronald Reagan was 73 years and 350 days old at his second inauguration).⁷

No incumbents

The 2008 election marked the first time since the 1952 election that neither the incumbent President nor the incumbent Vice President was a candidate in the general election, and the first time since the 1928 election that neither one sought his party's nomination for president.⁸⁹ The incumbent President, George W. Bush, was serving his second and final term and was barred from running again by the term limits in the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Vice President Dick Cheney chose not to seek the presidency. From 2001, Cheney frequently stated he would never run for President: "I will say just as hard as I possibly know how to say...If nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve."¹⁰

In the three previous two-term Presidential administrations — those of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton — the incumbent vice president had immediately thereafter run for president. Richard Nixon lost the 1960 election, George H. W. Bush won the 1988 election, and Al Gore lost the 2000 election.¹¹¹² The 2008 election was the first in which the sitting Vice President was not a candidate for either the presidency or the vice presidency since Nelson Rockefeller in 1976.

Outcomes

Prior to the election, commentators discussed whether Senator Obama would be able to redraw the electoral map, that is, win states that had been voting for Republican candidates in recent decades.¹³ In many ways, he was successful. He won every region of the country by double digits except the South, which the Republicans won by less than double digits (9 points). He won Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina in the South. The Republicans "took the South only because McCain, who ran roughly even with Obama among whites in every other region, won Southern whites by 38 percentage points."¹⁴

Obama was the first Democratic Presidential nominee to carry Virginia and Indiana since 1964, and the first to carry North Carolina since 1976. He was also able to win one electoral vote from Nebraska (together with Maine, one of two states that split their electoral votes), winning the electoral vote from Nebraska's 2nd congressional district. Nebraska's other four electoral votes went to John McCain.

At the same time, Obama was the first Democratic nominee since Woodrow Wilson in 1916 to win the presidency without winning West Virginia. He was also the first to win the presidency without winning five or more states of the South. Additionally, if Missouri is ultimately called for McCain, this will be the first time since 1956 that the state did not vote for the winner of the presidential race.

Election controversies

A number of pre-election controversies revolved around challenges to voter registration lists, involving techniques such as caging lists alleged to constitute voter suppression. Reporter Greg Palast predicted many 2004 United States election voting controversies could recur.¹⁵

Voter list purges using unlawful criteria caused controversy in at least six swing states: Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina.¹⁶ On October 5, 2008 the Republican Lt. Governor of Montana, John Bohlinger, accused the Montana Republican Party of vote caging to purge 6,000 voters from three counties which trend Democratic.¹⁷ Allegations arose in Michigan that the Republican Party planned to challenge the eligibility of voters based on lists of foreclosed homes.¹⁸ The Obama campaign filed a lawsuit challenging this.¹⁹ The House Judiciary Committee wrote to the Department of Justice requesting an investigation.²⁰

The McCain campaign tried to publicize the alleged ACORN scandal, in which the voter registration organization reported a small percentage of strange names among those they registered (many of whom were reportedly Democrats). Several states investigated allegations of fraud but did not find the organization liable. Voter fraud would not take place unless someone tried to vote using one of the illegal names.

Virginia election authorities were ordered by a federal judge to preserve late-arriving absentee ballots sent by active-duty military personnel following a suit by the McCain campaign. It alleged that the state sent absentee ballots late to servicemen.²¹ According to federal law, absentee ballots must be mailed to troops in foreign countries at least 45 days prior to an election. The charge against Virginia was that the ballots were not printed until after the deadline and therefore were mailed late to soldiers abroad.²²

Guam's 173,000 residents are U.S. citizens, and must obey U.S. laws passed in Washington, yet they have neither a voting member of Congress, nor votes in the Electoral College.²³ Since 1980 they have held a straw poll for president at the same time as the U.S. national elections. In 2007, Guam's legislature voted to move the straw poll up to September, to draw attention to the choices of Guam's population, as well as their continued disfranchisement.²³, but the bill was vetoed by the governor.²⁴ Obama won the 2008 Guam Straw Poll by 20,120 votes to 11,940 for McCain.²⁵

Libertarian candidate Bob Barr filed a lawsuit in Texas to have Obama and McCain removed from the ballot in that state.²⁶ His campaign alleged that both the candidates had missed the deadline to file, and were present on the ballot contrary to Texas election law. The Texas Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit without explanation.²⁷

Campaign

See also: United States presidential election, 2008 timeline

Pre-primary campaign

"Front runner" status is dependent on the news agency reporting, but by October 2007, the consensus listed about six candidates as leading the pack. For example, CNN listed Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Rudolph Giuliani, Barack Obama, Fred Thompson, and Mitt Romney as the front runners. The Washington Post listed Clinton, Edwards and Obama as the Democratic frontrunners, "leading in polls and fundraising and well ahead of the other major candidates".²⁸ MSNBC's Chuck Todd christened Giuliani and John McCain the Republican front runners after the second Republican presidential debate.²⁹

Three candidates, Clinton, Obama, and Romney, raised over $20 million in the first three months of 2007, and three others, Edwards, Giuliani, and McCain, raised over $12 million; the next closest candidate was Bill Richardson, who raised over $6 million.³⁰ In the third quarter of 2007, the top four GOP (Republican) fund raisers were Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, and Ron Paul.³¹ Paul set the GOP record for the largest online single day fund raising on November 5, 2007.³² Hillary Clinton set the Democratic record for largest single day fund raising in a primary on June 30, 2007.³³

Primaries and caucuses

Main articles: Democratic Party (United States) presidential primaries, 2008 and Republican Party (United States) presidential primaries, 2008

Technically the nomination process for both major political parties continues through June. In previous cycles the candidates were effectively chosen by the end of the March primaries. This trend continued in 2008 on the Republican side, as John McCain locked up the nomination with victories in Texas and Ohio on March 4. Democrat Barack Obama did not win the nomination until June 3, after a long campaign against Hillary Clinton. Obama had a wide lead in states won, but since 1976 Democratic state delegate contests have been decided by a form of proportional representation, and continuing popular votes for Clinton continued the contest.³⁴ Clinton claimed a lead in the popular vote, but the Associated Press found her numbers accurate only in one very close scenario.³⁵

During late 2007, both parties adopted rules against states' moving their primaries to an earlier date in the year. For the Republicans, the penalty for this violation was supposed to be the loss of half the state party's delegates to the convention. The Democratic Party allowed only four states to hold elections before February 5, 2008. Initially the Democratic Party leadership said it would strip all Democratic delegates from Florida and Michigan, which had moved their primaries into January. All major Democratic candidates agreed officially not to campaign in Florida or Michigan, and Edwards and Obama removed their names from the Michigan ballot. Clinton won a majority of delegates from both states (though 40% voted uncommitted) and subsequently led a fight to seat all the Florida and Michigan delegates.³⁶

Political columnist Christopher Weber noted that while her action was self-serving, it was also pragmatic to forestall Florida or Michigan voters becoming so disaffected they did not vote for Democrats in the general election.³⁷ There was some speculation that the fight over the delegates could last until the convention in August. On May 31, 2008, the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic Party reached a compromise to allow delegates from Michigan and Florida to receive half a vote each.³⁸

January 2008

At the start of the year, support for Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama began rising in the polls, passing longtime front runners Romney and Clinton for first place in Iowa: the two upstart campaigns were triumphant. John McCain displaced Rudy Giuliani and Romney as the front-runner in New Hampshire.

Obama was the new front runner in New Hampshire and the Clinton campaign was struggling. However, in a turning point for her campaign, Clinton's voice wavered with emotion in a public interview broadcast live on TV.³⁹ By the end of that day, Clinton won the primary by 2 points, contrary to the predictions of pollsters who had her as much as twelve points behind on the day of the primary itself.

Huckabee had little money and hoped for a third-place finish. Like Clinton, McCain staged a turnaround victory, having been written off by the pundits and polling in single digits less than a month before.⁴⁰

With the Republicans' stripping Michigan and Florida of half their delegates, the Republican race was based there. The Democrats focused on Nevada and South Carolina, which had been given special permission to have early contests; in South Carolina Obama got 55% of the vote. Meanwhile, McCain managed a small victory in South Carolina, setting him up for a larger and more important victory in Florida soon after.

February 2008

On February 3 on the UCLA campus, celebrities Oprah Winfrey, Caroline Kennedy and Stevie Wonder, among others, made appearances to show support for Barack Obama in a rally led by Michelle Obama.⁴¹ Obama trailed in the California polling by an average of 6.0%; he ended up losing the state by 8.3%.⁴² Some analysts cited a large Latino turnout as the deciding factor.⁴³ On the Republican side, John McCain was endorsed by Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rudy Giuliani (who had dropped out of the race following the Florida primary), giving McCain a significant boost in California state.⁴⁴ Schwarzenegger's wife, Maria Shriver, endorsed Obama.⁴⁵ By February 4, it was apparent that McCain might be able to wrap up the nomination quickly, while the Democratic candidates were hoping for a swing of momentum following the February 5 primaries.

Super Tuesday: On February 5, 2008, the largest-ever simultaneous number of state United States presidential primary elections was held.⁴⁶ Twenty-four states and American Samoa held either caucuses or primary elections for one or both parties on this date, leaving the Democrats in a virtual tie, and John McCain just short of clinching the Republican nod.⁴⁷ A few days later, Mitt Romney suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed McCain, leaving Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul as the only major challengers of McCain in the remaining Republican primaries.⁴⁸

Louisiana and Washington voted for both parties on February 9, while Nebraska and the U.S. Virgin Islands voted for the Democrats and Kansas voted for the Republicans. Obama swept all four Democratic contests, as well as the Maine caucuses the next day,⁴⁹ and Huckabee also came out on top in Kansas, winning by an even greater percentage. The District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia voted for both parties on February 12 in what was referred to as Potomac primary. Obama won all three for the Democrats (giving him eight consecutive victories after Super Tuesday) and McCain took all three for the Republicans.

Obama carried both Hawaii and Wisconsin, the last two states that voted for the Democrats in February, on the 19th.⁵⁰ Wisconsin and Washington voted for the Republicans on February 19; John McCain won these states.⁵⁰ The Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico closed February for the Republicans, on the 23rd and 24th.

March 2008

For the Republicans, on March 1 American Samoa voted. March 4 was dubbed by some as this year's Mini Tuesday,⁵¹ when the delegate-rich states of Texas and Ohio, along with Rhode Island and Vermont, voted for both parties. Wyoming then voted for the Democrats and Guam voted for the Republicans on March 8. Mississippi voted for both parties on March 11.

On March 4, Hillary Clinton carried Ohio and Rhode Island in the Democratic primaries; some considered this a surprise upset,⁵² though she led in the polling averages in both states.⁴²⁵³ She also carried the primary in Texas, but Obama won the Texas caucuses held the same day and netted more delegates from the state than Clinton.⁵⁴ John McCain clinched the Republican nomination after sweeping all four primaries, Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island, putting him over the top of the 1,191 delegates required to win the GOP nomination.⁵³ Mike Huckabee conceded the race to McCain, leaving Ron Paul, who had just 16 delegates, as his only remaining opponent for the Republican nomination.⁵⁵ In the Wyoming Democratic caucuses, Obama edged out Clinton to gain 7 delegates to her 5, and three days later he beat her again, 59%–39%, in Mississippi.

April through June 2008

Only one state voted in April: Pennsylvania, which held a primary for both parties on April 22. Hillary Clinton won this Democratic primary, with approximately 55% of the vote. Barack Obama won the Guam caucuses on May 3 by 7 votes out of more than 4,500. On May 6, Hillary Clinton won the Indiana primary with 51% of the vote while Barack Obama won in North Carolina with 56% of the vote. Nebraska's Republican and West Virginia's Democratic primaries were held on May 13. In West Virginia, Clinton won with 67% of the vote and 20 of 28 pledged delegates. On May 20, Kentucky and Oregon held primaries for both parties. In Kentucky, Clinton won with 65% of the vote to Obama's 31%. In Oregon, Obama defeated Clinton, by a margin of 18%. Idaho voted for Republicans only on May 27. On May 31, Democratic Party officials, after a tense meeting between Clinton supporters and Obama backers, voted to seat all of Florida and Michigan's delegates at the party's convention, with each getting a half-vote.⁵⁶ Puerto Rico held a Democratic primary on June 1, which Clinton won with 68% of the vote to Obama's 32%. The primary season ended on June 3, with contests in New Mexico (Republican), Montana (Democratic), and South Dakota (both parties). Clinton won South Dakota's primary, while Obama was victorious in the Montana primary. As expected, John McCain won all the states during this time period handily, though typically 20-25% of the vote in the Republican primaries went to Huckabee and Paul, despite the fact both had already been mathematically eliminated from contention for the nomination.

July 2008

Further information: Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2008#"Israel for Obama" Campaign

The Illinois Senator Barack Obama took a Middle East trip from Afghanistan to Iraq, Jordan and Israel where a small "Israel for Obama" rally was held for him.⁵⁷⁵⁸⁵⁹

Party conventions

• April 23–26, 2008: 2008 Constitution Party National Convention held in Kansas City, Missouri.
• May 23–26, 2008: 2008 Libertarian National Convention, held in Denver, Colorado.
• July 10–13, 2008: 2008 Green Party National Convention, held in Chicago, Illinois.
• July 18–20, 2008: 2008 Reform Party National Convention, held in Dallas, Texas.
• August 25–28, 2008: 2008 Democratic National Convention, held in Denver, Colorado.
• September 1–4, 2008: 2008 Republican National Convention, held in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Presidential and vice-presidential debates

Main article: United States presidential election debates, 2008

Four debates were announced by the Commission on Presidential Debates:⁶⁰

• September 26: The first presidential debate took place at the University of Mississippi. The central issues debated were foreign policy and national security. The debate was formatted into nine nine-minute segments, and the moderator (Jim Lehrer) introduced the topics.⁶¹
• October 2: The vice-presidential debate was hosted at Washington University in St. Louis, and was moderated by Gwen Ifill of PBS.
• October 7: The second presidential debate took place at Belmont University. It was a town meeting format debate moderated by NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and addressed issues raised by members of the audience, particularly the economy.
• October 15: The third and final presidential debate was hosted at Hofstra University. It focused on domestic and economic policy. Like the first presidential debate, it was formatted into a number of segments, with moderator Bob Schieffer introducing the topics.

Another debate was sponsored by the Columbia University political union and took place there on October 19. All candidates who could theoretically win the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election were invited, and Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, and Chuck Baldwin agreed to attend. Amy Goodman, principal host of Democracy Now!, moderated. It was broadcast on cable by C-SPAN and on the Internet by Break-the-Matrix.⁶²⁶³

Campaign costs

Main article: Fundraising for the 2008 United States presidential election

The reported cost of campaigning for President has increased significantly in recent years. One source reported that if the costs for both Democratic and Republican campaigns are added together (for the Presidential primary election, general election, and the political conventions) the costs have more than doubled in only eight years ($448.9 million in 1996, $649.5 million in 2000, and $1.01 billion in 2004).⁶⁴ In January 2007, Federal Election Commission Chairman Michael E. Toner estimated the 2008 race will be a $1 billion election, and that to be taken seriously, a candidate needed to raise at least $100 million by the end of 2007.⁶⁵

Although he had said he would not be running for president, published reports indicated that billionaire and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg had been considering a presidential bid as an independent with up to $1 billion of his own fortune to finance it.⁶⁶ Bloomberg ultimately ended this speculation by unequivocally stating that he would not run.⁶⁷ Had Bloomberg decided to run, he would not have needed to campaign in the primary elections or participate in the conventions, greatly reducing both the necessary length and cost of his campaign.

With the increase in money, the public financing system funded by the presidential election campaign fund checkoff has not been used by many candidates. John McCain,⁶⁸ Tom Tancredo,⁶⁹ John Edwards,⁷⁰ Chris Dodd,⁷¹ and Joe Biden⁷² qualified for and elected to take public funds in the primary. Other major candidates eschewed the low amount of spending permitted, or gave other reasons as in the case of Barack Obama, and have chosen not to participate.

Internet campaigns

Howard Dean collected large contributions via the internet in his 2004 primary run. In 2008 candidates went even further to reach out to Internet users through their own sites and such sites as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook.⁷³⁷⁴

Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama created a broad grassroots movement and a new method of campaigning by courting and mobilizing activists, donations and voters through the Internet. It was part of a campaign that mobilized grassroots workers in every state. Obama also set fundraising records in more than one month by gaining support from a record-breaking number of individual small donors.⁷⁵

On December 16, 2007, Ron Paul collected $6 million, more money on a single day through Internet donations than any presidential candidate in US history.⁷⁶

Anonymous and semi-anonymous smear campaigns traditionally done with fliers and push calling also spread to the Internet.⁷⁷ Organizations specializing in the production and distribution of viral material, such as Brave New Films, emerged; such organizations have been said to be having a growing influence on American politics.⁷⁸

Criticism of media coverage

Significant criticism was leveled at media outlets' coverage of the presidential election season. At the February debate, Tim Russert of NBC News was criticized for what some perceived as disproportionately tough questioning of Clinton.⁷⁹ Among the questions, Russert had asked Clinton, but not Obama, to provide the name of the new Russian President (Dmitry Medvedev).⁷⁹ This was later parodied on Saturday Night Live. In October 2007, liberal commentators accused Russert of harassing Clinton over the issue of supporting drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants.⁸⁰

On April 16 ABC News hosted a debate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 16. Moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos were criticized by viewers, bloggers and media critics for the poor quality of their questions.⁷⁹⁸⁰ Many viewers said they considered some of the questions irrelevant when measured against the importance of the faltering economy or the Iraq war. Included in that category were continued questions about Obama’s former pastor, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s assertion that she had to duck sniper fire in Bosnia more than a decade ago, and Senator Obama's not wearing an American flag pin.⁷⁹ The moderators focused on campaign gaffes and some believed they focused too much on Obama.⁸⁰ Stephanopoulos defended their performance, saying "Senator Obama was the front-runner" and the questions were "not inappropriate or irrelevant at all."⁷⁹⁸⁰

In an op-ed published on 2008 April 27 in The New York Times, Elizabeth Edwards bemoaned that the media covered much more of "the rancor of the campaign" and "amount of money spent" than "the candidates' priorities, policies and principles."⁸¹ Author Erica Jong commented that "our press has become a sea of triviality, meanness and irrelevant chatter."⁸²

The Project for Excellence in Journalism and Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy conducted a study of 5,374 media narratives and assertions about the presidential candidates from 2008 January 1 through 2008 March 9. The study found that Obama and Clinton received 69 percent and 67 percent favorable coverage, respectively, compared to only 43 percent favorable media coverage of McCain.⁸³ This trend widened following the presidential conventions, with an October 29 study of 43 news outlets finding 29 percent of stories about Obama to be negative, compared to 57 percent of stories about McCain being negative. This was most apparent on MSNBC, where 73 percent of McCain stories were negative compared to 14 percent for Obama.⁸⁴

A 2008 October 22 Pew Research Center poll estimated 70 percent of registered voters believed journalists wanted Barack Obama to win the election, as opposed to 9 percent for John McCain.⁸⁵

Despite controversy during the campaign, a post-election Pew research survey found that 67% of voters thought that the press fairly covered Obama, versus 30% who viewed the coverage as unfair. Regarding McCain, 53% of voters viewed his press coverage as fair versus 44% who characterized it as unfair. Among affiliated Democrats, 83% believed the press fairly covered Obama; just 22% of Republicans thought the press was fair to McCain. In a post-election survey in 2004, after Republican George Bush won the presidency, 40% of Republicans thought the press was fair to Bush, and 67% of Democrats believed it was fair to Kerry. ⁸⁶

Election Day

It has been suggested that Timeline of 2008 U.S. Election Day be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

Final poll closing times on Election Day.      7PM EST [00:00 UTC (6)      7:30PM EST [00:30 UTC] (3)      8PM EST [01:00 UTC] (15+DC)      8:30PM EST [01:30 UTC] (1)      9PM EST [02:00 UTC] (15)      10PM EST [03:00 UTC] (4)      11PM EST [04:00 UTC] (5)      1AM EST [06:00 UTC] (1)

• November 4, 2008: Election Day in 49 states, and the District of Columbia; and the last of 21 consecutive election days in Oregon, which abolished the voting booth in 1998. The majority of states allowed early voting with all states allowing some form of absentee voting.⁸⁷ Voters cast votes for listed presidential candidates but were actually selecting their state's slate of Electoral College members.

After Election Day

• December 15, 2008: Members of the U.S. Electoral College meet in each state to cast their votes for President and Vice President.
• January 8, 2009: Electoral votes officially tallied before both Houses of Congress. Members of Congress may object to the certification of a state's electoral votes at this time.
• January 20, 2009: Inauguration Day.

General Election candidates

Main articles: List of candidates in the United States presidential election, 2008, Comparison of United States presidential candidates, 2008, Republican Party (United States) presidential candidates, 2008, Republican Party (United States) vice presidential candidates, 2008, Democratic Party (United States) presidential candidates, 2008, Democratic Party (United States) vice presidential candidates, 2008, Third party (United States) presidential candidates, 2008, 2008 Democratic National Convention, Republican National Convention, and 2008 Libertarian National Convention

* - Candidate did not have major national ballot access

Election results

Grand total

Streetlight banner from Richard M. Daley in Hyde Park community area shows Obama's political image as one of Chicago's own.

Popular vote totals are unofficial.⁹³ Electoral vote projections per television network coverage (primarily CNN, ABC News, NBC News).

† 11 electoral votes not yet projected

Turnout

Popular vote by county. Red represents counties that went for McCain, Blue represents counties that went for Obama. Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont had all counties go to Obama. Alaska and Oklahoma had all counties go to McCain.

The voter turnout for this election was broadly predicted to be very high.⁹⁴ However, the actual percentage is estimated to be closer to 62%.⁹⁵ The current total number of votes tallied is just more than 126 million.⁹⁶

Results by state

Vote totals

Further information: United States presidential election: The popular vote on Election Day

Projections based on published official or unofficial state election board results, where available; otherwise, on television network coverage. Notes identify sources. Bold indicates actual vote count leader.