The 2008 Presidential Elections

Barack Obama’s presidential victory naturally led people to believe that the United States might finally be moving into a post-racial era. Obama’s Race—and its eye-opening account of the role played by race in the election—paints a dramatically different picture. The authors argue that the 2008 election was more polarized by racial attitudes than any other presidential election on record—and perhaps more significantly, that there were two sides to this racialization: resentful opposition to and racially liberal support for Obama. As Obama’s campaign was given a boost in the primaries from racial liberals that extended well beyond that usually offered to ideologically similar white candidates, Hillary Clinton lost much of her longstanding support and instead became the preferred candidate of Democratic racial conservatives. Time and again, voters’ racial predispositions trumped their ideological preferences as John McCain—seldom described as conservative in matters of race—became the darling of racial conservatives from both parties. Hard-hitting and sure to be controversial, Obama’s Race will be both praised and criticized—but certainly not ignored.

Barack Obama's stunning victory in the 2008 presidential election will go down as one of the more pivotal in American history. Given America's legacy of racism, how could a relatively untested first-term senator with an African father defeat some of the giants of American politics? In The Obama Victory, Kate Kenski, Bruce Hardy, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson draw upon the best voter data available, The National Annenberg Election Survey, as well as interviews with key advisors to each campaign, to illuminate how media, money, and messages shaped the 2008 election. They explain how both sides worked the media to reinforce or combat images of McCain as too old and Obama as not ready; how Obama used a very effective rough-and-tumble radio and cable campaign that was largely unnoticed by the mainstream media; how the Vice Presidential nominees impacted the campaign; how McCain's age and Obama's race affected the final vote, and much more. Briskly written and filled with surprising insights, The Obama Victory goes beyond opinion to offer the most authoritative account available of precisely how and why Obama won the presidency.

This detailed overview and analysis of the results of Barack Obama’s historic 2008 presidential win gives us the inside state-by-state guide to how Obama achieved his victory, and allows us to see where the country stood four years ago. Although much has changed in the nearly four years since, How Barack Obama Won remains the essential guide to Obama’s electoral strengths and offers important perspective on his 2012 bid. The votes in each state for Obama and McCain are broken down by percentage according to gender, age, race, party, religious affiliation, education, household income, size of city, and according to views about the most important issues (the economy, terrorism, Iraq, energy, healthcare), the future of the economy (worried, not worried) and the war in Iraq (approve, disapprove).

Communicator-in-Chief: How Barack Obama Used New Media Technology to Win the White House examines the fascinating and precedent-setting role new media technologies and the Internet played in the 2008 presidential campaign that allowed for the historic election of the nation's first African American president. It was the first presidential campaign in which the Internet, the electorate, and political campaign strategies for the White House successfully converged to propel a candidate to the highest elected office in the nation. The contributors to this volume masterfully demonstrate how the Internet is to President Barack Obama what television was to President John Kennedy, thus making Obama a truly twenty-first century communicator and politician. Furthermore, Communicator-in-Chief argues that Obama's 2008 campaign strategies established a model that all future campaigns must follow to achieve any measure of success. The Barack Obama campaign team astutely discovered how to communicate and motivate not only the general electorate but also the technology-addicted Millennial Generation - a generational voting block that will be a juggernaut in future elections.

The election of Barack Obama fundamentally changed America's relationship with the outside world. Written by a mix of scholars and practitioners, the chapters cover the entire electoral process and analyze what Obama's victory suggests about the development of America, socially, economically, and in its foreign relations.

The American Elections of 2008 assembles leading political scientists and journalists to explain the election results and their implications for America's future. Topics include financing the elections, religion's influence, the media, and how the George W. Bush legacy affected the outcome. The book also explores congressional behavior in the twenty-first century and discusses how it affected election results in 2008. Book jacket.

The U.S. presidential election of 2008 was one of the most significant elections in recent American history. Bringing together leading geographers and political scientists, this authoritative atlas analyzes and maps the campaigns, primaries, general election, and key state referenda to provide a rich picture of this watershed event. The contributors offer a comprehensive and detailed assessment of all aspects of the election, providing presidential results at the national level, in major regions, and in swing states. Drilling down to county level, they trace voting patterns for key racial, ethnic, religious, and occupational groups. They also illustrate the campaign strategies of Democratic and Republican party leaders. Moving beyond the national race, the atlas compares important senatorial and gubernatorial races to presidential votes and considers selected state referenda such as marriage amendments, farm animal cruelty, stem cell research, and physician-assisted suicide. For added context and depth, the 2008 election results are compared with previous national elections. Illustrated with more than 200 meticulously drawn full-color maps, the atlas will be an essential reference and a fascinating resource for pundits, voters, campaign staffs, and political junkies alike. Contributions by: John Agnew, J. Clark Archer, William Berentsen, Stanley D. Brunn, Thomas E. Chapman, Jeffrey R. Crump, Carl T. Dahlman, David Darmofal, Lisa M. DeChano-Cook, Mark Drayse, Joshua J. Dyck, Ryan D. Enos, Daniel Ervin, John W. Frazier, Megan A. Gall, Andrew Gelman, James G. Gimpel, Alex Ginsburg, Sean P. Gorman, Mark Graham, Nathaniel HadleyDike, John Heppen, Heather Hollen, Taylor Johnson, Kimberly Karnes, Larry Knopp, Matt Landers, Stephen J. Lavin, Jonathan I. Leib, Kenneth C. Martis, John McNulty, Joshua R. Meddaugh, Melissa R. Michelson, Mark A. Moody, Toby Moore, Richard L. Morrill, J. Eric Oliver, Kathleen O'Reilly, Nick Quinton, Mark E. Reisinger, Wesley J. Reisser, Tony Robinson, Fred M. Shelley, Taylor Shelton, Jonathan Taylor, Andrew J. Turner, Tom Vanderhorst, Barney Warf, Robert Watrel, Gerald R. Webster, and Matthew Zook.

The gripping inside story of the 2008 presidential election, by two of the best political reporters in the country. “It’s one of the best books on politics of any kind I’ve read. For entertainment value, I put it up there with Catch 22.” —The Financial Times “It transports you to a parallel universe in which everything in the National Enquirer is true….More interesting is what we learn about the candidates themselves: their frailties, egos and almost super-human stamina.” —The Financial Times “I can’t put down this book!” —Stephen Colbert Game Change is the New York Times bestselling story of the 2008 presidential election, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, two of the best political reporters in the country. In the spirit of Richard Ben Cramer’s What It Takes and Theodore H. White’s The Making of the President 1960, this classic campaign trail book tells the defining story of a new era in American politics, going deeper behind the scenes of the Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin campaigns than any other account of the historic 2008 election.