Past Campaigns: The 2008 Republican Party Race
As the 2008 election approached, George W. Bush was leaving the nation with two wars, and a blossoming sub-prime mortgage crisis, while enduring very low public approval ratings for his presidency. Bush was ineligible to run for a third term in office because of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, but it was extremely unlikely that he would have won a third term, given the circumstances that he and the nation found themselves in. Bush was handing a metaphorical poisoned challenge to the candidate who would succeed him for his party's nomination, but this did not deter a number of Republicans from seeking to succeed Bush as the Republican Party's nominee in the 2008 election.
The Democrats had a heated race for their nomination between Senator Hillary Clinton of New York and popular freshman Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, with a number of other candidates in the race. It came down to a very close contest between Clinton and Obama, with the popular Obama ultimately defeating his rival. For the Republicans a dozen significant candidates entered the race: (1) Arizona Senator John McCain (a former prisoner of war in the Vietnam War, who had finished second to Bush for the nomination in 2000); (2) Mitt Romney (the former Governor of Massachusetts and the son of former Presidential candidate George Romney); (3) Mike Huckabee (the former Governor of Arkansas); (4) Texas Congressman Ron Paul; (5) Rudy Giuliani (the former Mayor of New York City, whose profile rose nationally after the September 11, 2001 attack on his city); (6) Fred Thompson (an actor and former U.S. Senator from Tennessee); (7) Alan Keyes (former Ambassador, from Maryland); (8) Congressman Duncan Hunter of California; (9) Congressman Tom Tancredo from California; (10) Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas; (11) Tommy Thompson (former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services) and (12) Jim Gilmore (former Governor of Virginia). Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were considered a possible candidates, but both chose not to run. Former Virginia Senator George Allen (son of the legendary football coach of the same name) was considered a top contender until his loss in the midterm elections. He announced on December 10, 2006 that he would not seek the 2008 nomination.
After the 2006 midterm elections, in which the Democratic Party took control of both houses, Giuliani led in the polls of potential Republican Party nominees, followed closely by McCain. Giuliani's pro-choice stance on abortion and McCain's age and support of the unpopular Iraq War were seen as impediments to their candidacies, but Giuliani remained the frontrunner in the polls throughout most of 2007, with McCain and Fred Thompson in second place. Huckabee, Giuliani, Romney, McCain and Texas Congressman Ron Paul announced their candidacies on January 28, February 5, February 13, March 1 and March 12, respectively. By the third quarter of 2007, the top four GOP (Republican) fundraisers were Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, and Ron Paul, but at this stage it looked like a race between Giuliani and McCain.
The first to drop out of the race was Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore in July. After that Tommy Thompson also dropped out in August after finishing sixth in the Ames Iowa straw poll. Then pro-life advocate Sam Brownback dropped out of the race in October. In December, Tom Tancredo, a staunch illegal-immigration opponent, also left the race.
On January 3, 2008, the Iowa caucuses began. Huckabee swept much of the state, while Romney swept the eastern and western portions of the state and Paul took one southern county. The final results in Iowa were Huckabee with 34%, Romney with 25%, Thompson and McCain each with 13%, Paul with 10% and Giuliani with 4%. It looked as if McCain's candidacy was losing momentum. But in the New Hampshire Primary, where McCain and Romney had invested a lot of time and money, McCain who had won the state in 2000, won by a margin of 37%-32% over Romney, with Huckabee beating Giuliani for third place 11%-9%. After the results, Huckabee decided to focus on the South Carolina primary, while both McCain and Romney went to Michigan
Romney won the Wyoming caucus and many saw Michigan as the place where Romney would revitalize his campaign. McCain's campaign garnered about $1 million in newly contributed funds immediately after the New Hampshire win, but was still $3.5 million in debt. Polls showed McCain getting a significant national bounce from his New Hampshire win and a January 11 CNN nationwide poll had him at 34 percent support, a 21-point increase from where he had been just a month before. As the Michigan race was in its final days, McCain;s campaign sent out mailers there and in South Carolina attacking Romney's tax record. When accused of negative campaigning, a McCain campaign spokesman said "It's a tough business."
At the time Michigan had the nation's largest unemployment rate, at 7.4 percent, and was continuing to lose jobs from its manufacturing base. McCain was candid with the electorate, stating "There are some jobs that aren't coming back to Michigan". Romney spun McCain's statement as overly pessimistic. He promoted his Michigan roots as well as his being a Washington outsider who promised to go there and "turn Washington inside out." Romney won the primary with 39% to 30% for McCain.
Romney was heavily favored to win Nevada, leading 34% to 19% in polls and he exceeded expectations, getting 51% of the vote. Ron Paul beat McCain for second. Romney did not campaign in South Carolina, where McCain narrowly won by 3%. Fred Thompson placed third there and withdrew from the race the next day.
Giuliani's strategy was to campaign heavily in Florida, which he expected to win on the way to a strong showing on Super Tuesday. He campaigned almost exclusively in Florida, and ignored South Carolina and other states voting before February 5. But as the Florida primary approached, polling showed this to be a bad strategy. John McCain was the front runner, slightly ahead of Romney. After the South Carolina Republican primary, the leading candidates went to Florida to campaign. McCain received a last-minute endorsement by then-Republican Governor Charlie Crist and won the primary by 5% on January 29. He took all 57 delegates in Florida's winner-take-all contest.
February 5, 2008 was called Super Tuesday because 21 stated held their primaries or caucuses. On January 31 McCain received the endorsement of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who began campaigning with him. California was one of the Super Tuesday states and had more delegates than any other state. The same day, Governor Rick Perry of Texas threw his support behind McCain. Perry had previously been a Giuliani supporter, while Schwarzenegger had refrained from endorsing either McCain or Giuliani because he counted both men as friends. Romney was losing momentum and began to lash out at McCain, comparing him to disgraced former President Richard Nixon. Romney said that McCain was “reminiscent of the Nixon era” and that “I don’t think I want to see our party go back to that kind of campaigning.”
McCain won big on Super Tuesday. He won his home state of Arizona, taking all 53 of the state's delegates as expected. He won the largest of the Super Tuesday prizes, all of California's 173 delegates. McCain also scored wins in Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Oklahoma. Huckabee earned surprising victories Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and West Virginia. Romney won his home state of Massachusetts. He also won Utah, Colorado, and Minnesota.
Estimates showed McCain with 707 delegates - nearly 60% of the total needed to win the nomination. He began to appeal to conservatives, telling them that "We share the common principles and values and ideas for the future of this country based on a fundamental conservative political philosophy, which has been my record." He also told the right wing of the party to "calm down a little bit". Following Super Tuesday, Romney began hemorrhaging support and soon dropped out of the race.
Both McCain and Romney addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, DC on February 7, while Mike Huckabee spoke on February 9. Romney used his speech to announce the end of his campaign, saying, "Now if I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention," pausing while being interrupted by applause, and continuing "I want you to know I've given this a lot of thought. I'd forestall the launch of a national campaign and, frankly, I'd be making it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win. Frankly, in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror."
When Huckabee spoke to CPAC two days later, he said:
"I know that there was some speculation that I might come here today to announce that I would be getting out of the race. But I want to make sure you understand. Am I quitting? Well, let's get that settled right now. No, I'm not. And the reason is simple—I never learned arithmetic. You see folks, while I didn't get a college degree in mathematics and writing, I majored in miracles. Mathematically impossible miracles. It is because I go back to that which helped crystallize in me a conservative viewpoint as a teenager when it wasn't easy or popular to be a Republican or a conservative in my hometown, because I do believe that America is about making choices, not simply echoing that of others. Let others join the 'Me, too' crowd. But I didn't get where I am today and I didn't fight the battles in a state that, when I became its governor, was 90 percent Democrat, by simply echoing the voices of others. I did it by staking out a choice, stating that choice, making that choice and fighting for that choice, to believe that some things were right, some things were wrong, and it's better to be right and even to not win than it is to be wrong and to be a part of the crowd."
On February 9 Huckabee won an easy victory in Kansas, claiming all 36 of the state's delegates. Louisiana was a much closer race, but Huckabee won there also, beating McCain by less than one percentage point. McCain won the Washington caucuses. On February 12, with voting in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia, McCain swept the three races and took all 113 delegates which were at stake. The next day, the McCain camp released a statement calling a Huckabee win "mathematically impossible." With the media declaring McCain the "presumptive nominee", McCain began to focus his attacks on the Democrats.
On February 14, Mitt Romney officially endorsed McCain and asked his approximately 280 delegates to support him at the national convention. Despite these developments, Huckabee vowed to stay in the race. "I may get beat, but I’m not going to quit," he said. A few days later, McCain was endorsed by former President George H.W. Bush, in a move intended to shore up his support among base party elements. On February 19, McCain won the Wisconsin primary. McCain also won contests held on March 4, 2008 in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island, forcing Huckabee to withdraw after poor showings and giving John McCain enough delegates to win the Republican nomination. That night, Huckabee withdrew from the race and endorsed McCain.
The unpopular war in Iraq was a key issue during the campaign. McCain supported the war while Barack Obama opposed it. Obama's early and strong opposition to the war helped him stand out against the other Democratic candidates during the primaries. McCain's statement that the United States could be in Iraq for as much as the next 50 to 100 years was used against him by the Obama campaign. McCain had meant it as a peacetime presence like the United States maintained in Germany and Japan after World War II, but his opponent did not mention this distinction.
McCain's support for the troop 'surge' employed by General David Petraeus, which was one of several factors credited with improving the situation in Iraq, boosted McCain's support, but Obama was quick to remind voters that there would have been no need for a "surge" had there been no war at all. George W. Bush had become increasingly unpopular and polls consistently showed that his approval ratings among American voters at around 30 percent. Bush did not make a single appearance for McCain during the campaign and he appeared at the 2008 GOP convention only through a live video broadcast. Although he supported the war in Iraq, McCain made an effort to show that he had disagreed with Bush on many other key issues such as climate change. During the general election campaign, Obama continued a strategy of trying to link McCain to Bush, telling voters that McCain voted with Bush 90% of the time
Obama's promised "universal health care, full employment, a green America, and an America respected instead of feared by its enemies". He ably used new media to gain support and appeal to a younger audience. McCain attempted to counter Obama's message of change by promoting his experience but polling found that voters considered Obama's inexperience less of an impediment than McCain's association with President Bush.
McCain selected first-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Palin had been governor since 2006, and before that had been a council member and mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. She excited much of the conservative base of the GOP with her speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention. But in media interviews, Palin appeared to lack knowledge on key issues.
Polls taken in the last few months of the presidential campaign showed the economy as the top concern for voters. In the fall of 2008, the economy was suffering its most serious downturn since the Great Depression. During this period, John McCain's election prospects fell significantly. On September 15, the day of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, at a morning rally in Jacksonville, Florida, McCain declared that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," despite what he described as "tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street." The comment appeared to cost McCain politically.
On September 24, 2008, after the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, McCain announced that he was suspending his campaign to return to Washington to help craft a $700 billion bailout package for the troubled financial industry, and he stated that he would not debate Obama until Congress passed the bailout bill. He decided to attend the first presidential debate on September 26. When a bailout bill was passed by both the House and Senate, Obama, his vice presidential running mate Joe Biden, and McCain all voted for the measure. After the economic crisis and after McCain's poll numbers had started to fall. The financial crisis and economic conditions caused McCain's large drop in support in mid-September and severely damaged his campaign.
Obama called for universal health care. His health care plan proposed creating a National Health Insurance Exchange that would include both private insurance plans and a Medicare-like government run option. Coverage would be guaranteed regardless of health status, and premiums would not vary based on health status either. It would have required parents to cover their children, but did not require adults to buy insurance. McCain offered an alternate plan. A comparison by The Lewin Group, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, published in October 2008, found that the McCain plan would reduce the number of uninsured by 21.1 million and cost $2.05 trillion over 10 years, while the Obama plan would reduce the uninsured by 26.6 million and increase federal spending by $1.17 trillion over the same period. A poll released in early November 2008, found that voters supporting Obama listed health care as their second priority while voters supporting McCain listed it as fourth.
On election day Obama scored a huge victory, receiving 69,498,516 votes (52.93%) and 365 electoral votes. McCain received 59,948,323 voted (45.65%) and 173 electoral votes. One of the interesting aspects of the election results was the significant disparity in demographics of support, according to exit polling. Some of the polarization trends seen in the 2000 and 2004 elections continued, as McCain won white voters by a margin of 55 to 43 percent, while Obama won the overwhelming majority of African-American voters (95 to 4 percent), Hispanic voters (67 to 31 percent), and Asian-American voters (62-35 percent). Voters aged 18–29 voted for Obama by 66–32 percent while elderly voters backed McCain 53–45 percent.
The Democrats had a heated race for their nomination between Senator Hillary Clinton of New York and popular freshman Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, with a number of other candidates in the race. It came down to a very close contest between Clinton and Obama, with the popular Obama ultimately defeating his rival. For the Republicans a dozen significant candidates entered the race: (1) Arizona Senator John McCain (a former prisoner of war in the Vietnam War, who had finished second to Bush for the nomination in 2000); (2) Mitt Romney (the former Governor of Massachusetts and the son of former Presidential candidate George Romney); (3) Mike Huckabee (the former Governor of Arkansas); (4) Texas Congressman Ron Paul; (5) Rudy Giuliani (the former Mayor of New York City, whose profile rose nationally after the September 11, 2001 attack on his city); (6) Fred Thompson (an actor and former U.S. Senator from Tennessee); (7) Alan Keyes (former Ambassador, from Maryland); (8) Congressman Duncan Hunter of California; (9) Congressman Tom Tancredo from California; (10) Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas; (11) Tommy Thompson (former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services) and (12) Jim Gilmore (former Governor of Virginia). Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were considered a possible candidates, but both chose not to run. Former Virginia Senator George Allen (son of the legendary football coach of the same name) was considered a top contender until his loss in the midterm elections. He announced on December 10, 2006 that he would not seek the 2008 nomination.
After the 2006 midterm elections, in which the Democratic Party took control of both houses, Giuliani led in the polls of potential Republican Party nominees, followed closely by McCain. Giuliani's pro-choice stance on abortion and McCain's age and support of the unpopular Iraq War were seen as impediments to their candidacies, but Giuliani remained the frontrunner in the polls throughout most of 2007, with McCain and Fred Thompson in second place. Huckabee, Giuliani, Romney, McCain and Texas Congressman Ron Paul announced their candidacies on January 28, February 5, February 13, March 1 and March 12, respectively. By the third quarter of 2007, the top four GOP (Republican) fundraisers were Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, and Ron Paul, but at this stage it looked like a race between Giuliani and McCain.
The first to drop out of the race was Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore in July. After that Tommy Thompson also dropped out in August after finishing sixth in the Ames Iowa straw poll. Then pro-life advocate Sam Brownback dropped out of the race in October. In December, Tom Tancredo, a staunch illegal-immigration opponent, also left the race.
On January 3, 2008, the Iowa caucuses began. Huckabee swept much of the state, while Romney swept the eastern and western portions of the state and Paul took one southern county. The final results in Iowa were Huckabee with 34%, Romney with 25%, Thompson and McCain each with 13%, Paul with 10% and Giuliani with 4%. It looked as if McCain's candidacy was losing momentum. But in the New Hampshire Primary, where McCain and Romney had invested a lot of time and money, McCain who had won the state in 2000, won by a margin of 37%-32% over Romney, with Huckabee beating Giuliani for third place 11%-9%. After the results, Huckabee decided to focus on the South Carolina primary, while both McCain and Romney went to Michigan
Romney won the Wyoming caucus and many saw Michigan as the place where Romney would revitalize his campaign. McCain's campaign garnered about $1 million in newly contributed funds immediately after the New Hampshire win, but was still $3.5 million in debt. Polls showed McCain getting a significant national bounce from his New Hampshire win and a January 11 CNN nationwide poll had him at 34 percent support, a 21-point increase from where he had been just a month before. As the Michigan race was in its final days, McCain;s campaign sent out mailers there and in South Carolina attacking Romney's tax record. When accused of negative campaigning, a McCain campaign spokesman said "It's a tough business."
At the time Michigan had the nation's largest unemployment rate, at 7.4 percent, and was continuing to lose jobs from its manufacturing base. McCain was candid with the electorate, stating "There are some jobs that aren't coming back to Michigan". Romney spun McCain's statement as overly pessimistic. He promoted his Michigan roots as well as his being a Washington outsider who promised to go there and "turn Washington inside out." Romney won the primary with 39% to 30% for McCain.
Romney was heavily favored to win Nevada, leading 34% to 19% in polls and he exceeded expectations, getting 51% of the vote. Ron Paul beat McCain for second. Romney did not campaign in South Carolina, where McCain narrowly won by 3%. Fred Thompson placed third there and withdrew from the race the next day.
Giuliani's strategy was to campaign heavily in Florida, which he expected to win on the way to a strong showing on Super Tuesday. He campaigned almost exclusively in Florida, and ignored South Carolina and other states voting before February 5. But as the Florida primary approached, polling showed this to be a bad strategy. John McCain was the front runner, slightly ahead of Romney. After the South Carolina Republican primary, the leading candidates went to Florida to campaign. McCain received a last-minute endorsement by then-Republican Governor Charlie Crist and won the primary by 5% on January 29. He took all 57 delegates in Florida's winner-take-all contest.
February 5, 2008 was called Super Tuesday because 21 stated held their primaries or caucuses. On January 31 McCain received the endorsement of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who began campaigning with him. California was one of the Super Tuesday states and had more delegates than any other state. The same day, Governor Rick Perry of Texas threw his support behind McCain. Perry had previously been a Giuliani supporter, while Schwarzenegger had refrained from endorsing either McCain or Giuliani because he counted both men as friends. Romney was losing momentum and began to lash out at McCain, comparing him to disgraced former President Richard Nixon. Romney said that McCain was “reminiscent of the Nixon era” and that “I don’t think I want to see our party go back to that kind of campaigning.”
McCain won big on Super Tuesday. He won his home state of Arizona, taking all 53 of the state's delegates as expected. He won the largest of the Super Tuesday prizes, all of California's 173 delegates. McCain also scored wins in Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Oklahoma. Huckabee earned surprising victories Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and West Virginia. Romney won his home state of Massachusetts. He also won Utah, Colorado, and Minnesota.
Estimates showed McCain with 707 delegates - nearly 60% of the total needed to win the nomination. He began to appeal to conservatives, telling them that "We share the common principles and values and ideas for the future of this country based on a fundamental conservative political philosophy, which has been my record." He also told the right wing of the party to "calm down a little bit". Following Super Tuesday, Romney began hemorrhaging support and soon dropped out of the race.
Both McCain and Romney addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, DC on February 7, while Mike Huckabee spoke on February 9. Romney used his speech to announce the end of his campaign, saying, "Now if I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention," pausing while being interrupted by applause, and continuing "I want you to know I've given this a lot of thought. I'd forestall the launch of a national campaign and, frankly, I'd be making it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win. Frankly, in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror."
When Huckabee spoke to CPAC two days later, he said:
"I know that there was some speculation that I might come here today to announce that I would be getting out of the race. But I want to make sure you understand. Am I quitting? Well, let's get that settled right now. No, I'm not. And the reason is simple—I never learned arithmetic. You see folks, while I didn't get a college degree in mathematics and writing, I majored in miracles. Mathematically impossible miracles. It is because I go back to that which helped crystallize in me a conservative viewpoint as a teenager when it wasn't easy or popular to be a Republican or a conservative in my hometown, because I do believe that America is about making choices, not simply echoing that of others. Let others join the 'Me, too' crowd. But I didn't get where I am today and I didn't fight the battles in a state that, when I became its governor, was 90 percent Democrat, by simply echoing the voices of others. I did it by staking out a choice, stating that choice, making that choice and fighting for that choice, to believe that some things were right, some things were wrong, and it's better to be right and even to not win than it is to be wrong and to be a part of the crowd."
On February 9 Huckabee won an easy victory in Kansas, claiming all 36 of the state's delegates. Louisiana was a much closer race, but Huckabee won there also, beating McCain by less than one percentage point. McCain won the Washington caucuses. On February 12, with voting in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia, McCain swept the three races and took all 113 delegates which were at stake. The next day, the McCain camp released a statement calling a Huckabee win "mathematically impossible." With the media declaring McCain the "presumptive nominee", McCain began to focus his attacks on the Democrats.
On February 14, Mitt Romney officially endorsed McCain and asked his approximately 280 delegates to support him at the national convention. Despite these developments, Huckabee vowed to stay in the race. "I may get beat, but I’m not going to quit," he said. A few days later, McCain was endorsed by former President George H.W. Bush, in a move intended to shore up his support among base party elements. On February 19, McCain won the Wisconsin primary. McCain also won contests held on March 4, 2008 in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island, forcing Huckabee to withdraw after poor showings and giving John McCain enough delegates to win the Republican nomination. That night, Huckabee withdrew from the race and endorsed McCain.
The unpopular war in Iraq was a key issue during the campaign. McCain supported the war while Barack Obama opposed it. Obama's early and strong opposition to the war helped him stand out against the other Democratic candidates during the primaries. McCain's statement that the United States could be in Iraq for as much as the next 50 to 100 years was used against him by the Obama campaign. McCain had meant it as a peacetime presence like the United States maintained in Germany and Japan after World War II, but his opponent did not mention this distinction.
McCain's support for the troop 'surge' employed by General David Petraeus, which was one of several factors credited with improving the situation in Iraq, boosted McCain's support, but Obama was quick to remind voters that there would have been no need for a "surge" had there been no war at all. George W. Bush had become increasingly unpopular and polls consistently showed that his approval ratings among American voters at around 30 percent. Bush did not make a single appearance for McCain during the campaign and he appeared at the 2008 GOP convention only through a live video broadcast. Although he supported the war in Iraq, McCain made an effort to show that he had disagreed with Bush on many other key issues such as climate change. During the general election campaign, Obama continued a strategy of trying to link McCain to Bush, telling voters that McCain voted with Bush 90% of the time
Obama's promised "universal health care, full employment, a green America, and an America respected instead of feared by its enemies". He ably used new media to gain support and appeal to a younger audience. McCain attempted to counter Obama's message of change by promoting his experience but polling found that voters considered Obama's inexperience less of an impediment than McCain's association with President Bush.
McCain selected first-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Palin had been governor since 2006, and before that had been a council member and mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. She excited much of the conservative base of the GOP with her speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention. But in media interviews, Palin appeared to lack knowledge on key issues.
Polls taken in the last few months of the presidential campaign showed the economy as the top concern for voters. In the fall of 2008, the economy was suffering its most serious downturn since the Great Depression. During this period, John McCain's election prospects fell significantly. On September 15, the day of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, at a morning rally in Jacksonville, Florida, McCain declared that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," despite what he described as "tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street." The comment appeared to cost McCain politically.
On September 24, 2008, after the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, McCain announced that he was suspending his campaign to return to Washington to help craft a $700 billion bailout package for the troubled financial industry, and he stated that he would not debate Obama until Congress passed the bailout bill. He decided to attend the first presidential debate on September 26. When a bailout bill was passed by both the House and Senate, Obama, his vice presidential running mate Joe Biden, and McCain all voted for the measure. After the economic crisis and after McCain's poll numbers had started to fall. The financial crisis and economic conditions caused McCain's large drop in support in mid-September and severely damaged his campaign.
Obama called for universal health care. His health care plan proposed creating a National Health Insurance Exchange that would include both private insurance plans and a Medicare-like government run option. Coverage would be guaranteed regardless of health status, and premiums would not vary based on health status either. It would have required parents to cover their children, but did not require adults to buy insurance. McCain offered an alternate plan. A comparison by The Lewin Group, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, published in October 2008, found that the McCain plan would reduce the number of uninsured by 21.1 million and cost $2.05 trillion over 10 years, while the Obama plan would reduce the uninsured by 26.6 million and increase federal spending by $1.17 trillion over the same period. A poll released in early November 2008, found that voters supporting Obama listed health care as their second priority while voters supporting McCain listed it as fourth.
On election day Obama scored a huge victory, receiving 69,498,516 votes (52.93%) and 365 electoral votes. McCain received 59,948,323 voted (45.65%) and 173 electoral votes. One of the interesting aspects of the election results was the significant disparity in demographics of support, according to exit polling. Some of the polarization trends seen in the 2000 and 2004 elections continued, as McCain won white voters by a margin of 55 to 43 percent, while Obama won the overwhelming majority of African-American voters (95 to 4 percent), Hispanic voters (67 to 31 percent), and Asian-American voters (62-35 percent). Voters aged 18–29 voted for Obama by 66–32 percent while elderly voters backed McCain 53–45 percent.