The Numbers

Honestly, I thought Obama would win by a larger margin, particularly in the popular vote. He got 52%. I thought he'd get 55%. But I just looked back on some stats and even when Bush beat Dukakis in 1988 - a total blowout, the popular vote was 53%-45%. To think Obama could get 55% was a little naive, I guess.

It's interesting - McCain got 46% of the vote. When Bush beat Gore he got 48% and when Clinton beat Dole he got 47%. When Clinton beat Bush I he only got 43% (because of Perot). For McCain to pull 46% of the popular vote suggests people like McCain better than they let on. Combine a couple of factors - 1) McCain was a heavy underdog going in, so rational voters went in thinking - I'll vote for this guy, even though he's probably going to lose 2) He ran against a very adept opponent 3) He ran a pretty bad campaign and the Palin pick clearly backfired in the end 4) The economy went to shit and this always hurts the incumbent party and 5) He had to run away from a terribly unpopular incumbent President.

And despite all this, he still got 46%.

Some theories and stats on the election. An interesting bit:

-- Sarah Palin. Polling shows that she drove some voters away from Sen. McCain and to Barack Obama. Voters judged her to be too inexperienced to be president. Also, instead of appealing to independents, she became a polarizing figure. ALSO -- her persona highlighted McCain's age and health since she could have taken over. ALSO -- her selection killed the "inexperience" argument against Obama.

I think the last point is right on. McCain went for the equalizing element - by trying to steal the cultural phenomena/historical figure steam from Obama. A clever idea - especially after seeing how Clinton got beat in the primary. And it worked - Palin became a phenom too and stole a lot of media attention and thunder from Obama. McCain went after Obama's strength, but in hindsight, maybe he should of gone after his weakness: experience and judgment. Clinton tried it and it failed, so McCain went a different route. But maybe this was a big tactical mistake - he might of been better off sticking to his core message: experience, security, etc, and just built upon Clinton's message (which was working at the end of the Dem primary and probably would have worked better in Republican circles). Instead, Obama ended up stealing McCain's thunder by picking Biden and coming across as more a center-left, responsible decision maker.