General Election 2008 End Analysis
by Mark Rosenthal
This is my final, apolitical analysis of the 2008 General Election for President of the United States. It is a very extensive and detailed analysis, based on the numbers and the numbers only. The large table in this report is what I call the “EVERYTHING table”, for once you learn to interpret the figures, just about every detail of import about this election is in this one table.
Important: please note the use of bold type and either blue (democratic), red (republican) or green (third party) colors for percentages, etc., for I will be using the color system more and listing names less. This will be especially helpful in interpreting tables quickly.
The websites I used the most as resources are listed in the appendix to this report.
The vote tallies are still not 100% finished, as a number of states have a tradition of reporting the “straggler” write-in votes (somewhere between 0.005-0.008%) a couple of months after the election is over. Because of federalism, each state gets to decide how and when to report scrap-vote totals. But I can say now that there are maybe 30,000 write-in votes outstanding, if at all, and those 30,000 votes will not change the percentual outcome of the election. On a personal note, I must say that experiencing how each state handles the flow of information BEFORE and AFTER a GE has been an eye-opening experience and I will be doing a separate write up evaluating all of the states and their performance in reporting the intermediate and final vote tallies.
Speaking of percentual, this brings me to the second very important point: math. This is all simply the numbers and what they report about victory, loss and trends. But because of rounding to the next highest 1/100th of a percentage point (the standard in electoral research), there can be a 0.01% deviation between the margin we would assume by simply taking the winning percentage and subtracting the losing percentage as opposed to taking the actual raw number that is the margin and dividing it by the total number of votes. So, in the tables provided below, there will be a number of cases where the calculated margin difference or margin shift appears to be off by 0.01% - it is not. The figures are indeed correct.
Contents:
I. In a nutshell – national PV
II. Introductory summary
III. The EVERYTHING table
IV. Re-Alignment Election?
V. Obama's place in the national rankings
VI. Conclusion
So, with the preliminaries out of the way, here we go:
I. IN A NUTSHELL
As of 09/16/2009, the final vote totals:
NATIONAL
|
Candidate |
Pop. Vote |
% |
Pop. Margin |
% Margin |
|
Obama (D) |
52.87% |
+9,549,266 |
+7.26% |
|
|
McCain (R) |
59,950,037 |
45.60% |
-- |
-- |
|
Other |
2,009,465 |
1.53% |
-- |
-- |
|
Total |
131,458,805 |
100.00% |
-- |
-- |
Comparison to 2004:
|
Year |
Democratic: |
Republican: |
All Others: |
Total: |
|
2008 |
59,948,240 |
1,996,142 |
131,442,598 |
|
|
2004 |
59,028,439 |
62,040,610 |
1,224,499 |
122,293,548 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Difference: |
+10,469,777 |
-2,092,370 |
+771,643 |
+9,149,050 |
Comparison - my projection from 11/04, before the polls closed, to the final results:
|
Candidate |
Current % |
Bonncaruso's prediction: |
Difference: |
|
Obama (D) |
52.87% |
52.77% |
-0.10% |
|
McCain (R) |
45.61% |
45.23% |
+0.38 |
|
All others |
1.52% |
2.00% |
+0.48% |
|
Margin |
+7.26 |
+7.54 |
+0.28 |
By region and sub-region. Margin shift = margin difference to 2004:
|
Region: |
Obama: |
McCain: |
Other: |
Margin: |
Margin shift: |
|
Northeast |
59.86% |
38.75% |
1.39% |
+21.11% |
+8.31% |
|
New England |
60.66% |
37.54% |
1.81% |
+23.12% |
+6.21% |
|
Middle Atlantic |
59.59% |
39.15% |
1.26% |
+20.44% |
+9.02% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Midwest |
53.85% |
44.53% |
1.62% |
+9.32% |
+6.91% |
|
E. North Central |
55.86% |
42.60% |
1.53% |
+13.26% |
+12.83% |
|
W. North Central |
49.48% |
48.72% |
1.80% |
+0.76% |
+9.36% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
South |
45.68% |
53.25% |
1.06% |
+7.57% |
-7.64% |
|
South Atlantic |
49.74% |
49.26% |
1.00% |
+0.48% |
+10.38% |
|
E. South Central |
41.16% |
57.73% |
1.21% |
+16.47% |
-2.36 |
|
W. South Central |
41.57% |
57.36% |
1.07% |
+15.79% |
+5.56% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
West |
55.95% |
41.87% |
2.17% |
+14.08% |
+12.93% |
|
Mountain West |
47.48% |
50.44% |
2.08% |
+2.96% |
-11.86% |
|
Pacific West |
59.86% |
37.93% |
2.22% |
+21.93% |
+13.67% |
STATE-BY-STATE: see „EVERYTHING TABLE“ below.
II. INTRODUCTORY SUMMARY:
On November 4th, 2008, Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States of America with 52.87% of the national popular vote as opposed to John McCain's 45.61%, which calculates to a +7.26% national winning margin. The remaining 1.51% of the national popular vote went to third party and write-in candidates (Ralph Nader: 0.56%, Ron Barr: 0.40%, Chuck Baldwin: 0.15%, Cynthia McKinney: 0.12% and write-in candidates, including Ron Paul and Alan Keyes: 0.29%).
The democratic national winning margin of +7.26% will be critical in measuring the partisan rankings of each state in the union and will serve as the baseline for comparing 2008 to 2012. Obama won 3 of 4 geographical regions (and 7 of 9 sub-regions) of the USA, mostly with landslides. Obama also “flipped” 2 sub-regions of the USA from the GOP in 2004 to the DEMS in 2008: the West North Central and South Atlantic regions. The Democratic party posted margin gains in all regions of the USA where the democratic party won over 2004 . The Republican party posted margin gain losses in all regions of the USA where the republican party won over 2004 .
A little over 131.4 million valid votes were cast in the 50 states of the Union plus D.C., setting a new raw vote record. The voter turnout for 2008 was 61.6%, the highest voter turnout rate in the US since 1968. Barack Obama received close to 69.5 million votes, also setting a record for the highest raw vote number for one candidate in the history of the USA. Obama earned roughly 9.5 million more votes than John McCain, 10.5 million more votes than John Kerry's GE performance in 2004 and also 7.4 million votes more than George W. Bush garnered in 2004. The exact breakdown, state by state, including raw vote totals, with comparison to 2004, also per region, is here at GOOGLE DOCS.
Since George W. Bush, Jr. won in 2004 with a +2.46% margin, the partisan shift (also known as the “Swing”) from 2004 to 2008 is: +9.72%. This is calculated as the new margin minus the old margin: +2.46 for Bush is the same value as -2.46 for Kerry, so +7.26 - (-2.46) = +9.72. This partisan shift translates to a just over 12.5 million raw vote margin. Since a margin starting at around 9.5% and up is considered a landslide margin, the partisan shift from 2004 to 2008 represents a landslide shift for the democratic party.
Obama's popular vote win translated into an Electoral College win of 365 EV (67.80%) to McCain's 173 EV (32.20%), making an Electoral College margin of +192 EV (+35.60%). Obama won the electors from 28 states plus D.C., plus the second congressional district from NE. For the sake of simplicity, as of this point, DC will be listed as a “state”. McCain won the electors from 22 states. Since George W. Bush, Jr. won in the Electoral College in 2004 with a +35 EV margin, the margin shift from 2004 to 2008 is: +227 EV (+42.19%).
However, if we are to be completely exact, Obama won one of three CDs in NE but only one of five electors. For the purpose of calculation, it would be fair to split the difference. The mean between one-third and one-fifth is: one-fourth. So, we can say that Obama won 25% of NE and McCain won the other 75% and therefore:
Obama won 29.25 “states” (57.35% of the Union, in terms of number of states won).
McCain won 21.75 “states” (42.65% of the Union, in terms of number of states won).
Visually: