General Election-2008 Presidential Campaign

President George W. Bush's unpopularity put Republicans at a huge disadvantage in the 2008 campaign, and one might well ask if any Republican presidential candidate could have won. Democrats hammered away at the "more of the same," third-Bush-term theme, but that was just one of many factors of design and chance that aligned to produce Obama's win.

On June 19, 2008, betting on its strong fundraising capability, the Obama campaign announced it would forego the $84 million general election grant under the public financing system. This was something that had never been done under the 30-plus years of the system. Obama had earlier said he would adhere to the system and he came under criticism, but the move paid off in spades as his campaign enjoyed continued fundraising success, raised $233.2 million from Sept. 1 to Nov. 24. The Obama campaign's financial advantage meant more staff, more ads, and more glossy brochures, posters and other such items in key states. The analogy of a fully outfitted yacht competing against a canoe may be somewhat of an exaggeration but does give a sense of the race.

The Obama campaign could have poured all that money into paid media, and indeed it did run an extensive media campaign, but the real star of the campaign was its ground game. The campaign used the intensive field organizing it employed to such effect in the primaries. In a June 9, 2008 e-mail, Obama for America deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand wrote, "...I am proud to announce that our presidential campaign will be the first in a generation to deploy and maintain staff in every single state." By Oct. 24, 2008 Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune reported that the Obama campaign had 770 field offices around the country. These Campaign for Change offices focused on voter registration, a task which the Democrats had outsourced to a considerable degree in the 2004 campaign. In a conference call on Oct. 24, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said the campaign knew it was "going to have to win a bunch of battleground states by a narrow margin." The campaign's strong ground game put states such as Virginia, Indiana and North Carolina into play. Even if it could not win all of these states, the McCain campaign had to pay attention to them. In the closing weeks the McCain campaign found itself focusing major attention on the less than ideal state of Pennsylvania, where Democrats had a registration advantage of more than 1.2 million, and where, of 712,925 approved new voter applications processed since January 2008, 427,479 registered as Democrats compared to 144,118 registered as Republicans.

Compounding the Republican ticket's difficulties, the playing field shifted markedly in September 2008. The center of discussion, which had been the war in Iraq during the early primaries, then energy as gas prices soared, turned to the financial crisis. McCain himself had conceded that his strength was in defense and foreign policy, not economics. Additionally McCain's announcement on Sept. 24 that he would suspend his campaign came across to many observers as a political stunt.

McCain's selection of Gov. Palin also prompted considerable questioning, particularly given his age. The pick provided a much-needed shot of adrenaline to the campaign and energized the base, but ultimately it did not help with independent voters.

McCain's message also had some weaknesses. His ad campaign focused heavily on painting a negative picture of Obama but failed to elaborate on his own vision and plans. He could present himself as a maverick and call for change, but Democrats pointed out that he "voted with Bush and Cheney 90% of the time." Meanwhile Obama, although he too ran some negative and distorting ads, was most identified with his message of hope and unity, even if it didn't get into specifics. In mid-October, the McCain team found a decent theme they could use in the closing weeks of the campaign: Joe the Plumber. On a more narrow point, in the closing month or so Democrats and allied groups savaged McCain's health plan, and the Republican campaign did not effectively respond to those attacks.

Regardless of his views, as a candidate McCain fell short of Obama in a number of areas. Obama was a figure out of central casting -- young, attractive and able to give a rousing speech. Much was written about the Bradley effect and whether it would cost Obama votes, but McCain's age probably cost him votes. Although McCain was a genuine hero, it was Obama who had star quality and was seen as a transformational figure. Obama seemed calm and unflappable, while questions had long been raised about McCain's temperament.

In 2004, the electorate was highly polarized; people were for President Bush or they were against him. 2008 had a different dynamic. While there remained anti-Bush sentiment, in comparison to Kerry, Obama inspired more voters to actually vote for him rather than just vote against Bush.

Finally, quite a few conservatives point to unfair coverage from the media as a factor in this race. The problem wasn't just with the New York Times, a favorite target for conservative criticism. A Center for Media and Public Affairs content analysis of 979 election news stories on the ABC, CBC, NBC and FOX evening newscasts, released on Oct. 30 >, found that, "On the broadcast network newscasts, evaluations of Barack Obama and Joe Biden have been over twice as favorable as evaluations of John McCain and Sarah Palin– 65% positive versus 35% negative for the Democratic ticket compared to 31% positive verus 69% negative evaluations of the Republican ticket." An Oct. 22 study > by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that "coverage of McCain has been heavily unfavorable--and has become more so over time." The Washington Post's ombudsman Deborah Howell acknowledged "An Obama Tilt in Campaign Coverage" at her paper (Nov. 9). On the other side of the equation, it must be acknowledged that conservative talk radio hammered away at the Democratic nominee daily.

Travel by the Principals in the General Election Campaign
	June	July	Aug.	Sept.	Oct./Nov.	By State
Sen. John McCain	x	x	x	x	x	>
Gov. Sarah Palin			x	x	x	>
Cindy McCain x
Todd Palin x
Sen. Barack Obama	x	x	x	x	x	>
Sen. Joe Biden		.	x	x	x	>
Michelle Obama			x	x	x
Jill Biden x
Rationale, Methodology and Limitations						Ralph Nader


Selected states in detail: CO \| FL \| IA \| IN \| MI \| MN \| MO \| MT \| NV \| NM \| NC \| OH \| PA \| VA \| WV \| WI More states: CA \| NH \| NJ \| NY \| TX \| WA

Battleground or Swing States and Other States
In a real sense the general election begins once the nominees are known; then the presumptive nominee turns his or her attention from the primary contest to the opponent he or she will face in the general election and the goal of obtaining 270 electoral votes.

The campaign must determine how best to spend the resources it has available. In some states the campaign will "play hard" or even "play very hard." These contested states receive frequent visits by the candidate, his wife, the vice presidential candidate, and surrogates, and the campaign makes serious ad buys in them. At the other extreme, some states are essentially written off as unwinnable; they receive minimal resources. As the weeks progress a campaign may upgrade or downgrade a state's importance as it becomes more or less competitive. The most obvious examples were the Obama campaign's pulling out of North Dakota in the latter part of September and McCain campaign's pulling out of Michigan at the beginning of October. As the campaign progressed, the Obama campaign was able to expand the field, putting a number of red states into play.


For a campaign, the electorate can be divided into three groups: those who are for the candidate, those who are "agin" him and the undecided. In the fall, much of the campaign's resources are directed to this third group. Then, in the closing weeks, the campaign makes a substantial effort to mobilize its base supporters.