United States Presidential election, 2008
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- Category: US Election News
- Last Updated: Thursday, 22 January 2015 20:35
The United States presidential election of 2008, scheduled for Tuesday, November 4, 2008, will be the 56th consecutive quadrennial United States presidential election and will select the President of the United States and Vice President of the United States. The two major parties' candidates have not been officially chosen, but their presumptive nominees are John McCain, the senior United States Senator from Arizona, for the Republican Party and Barack Obama, the junior United States Senator from Illinois, for the Democratic Party. The 2008 election is particularly notable because it is the first time in U.S. history that two sitting senators will run against each other for president and because it will be the first time an African American will be a presidential nominee for a major party.
The Libertarian Party has nominated former Congressman Bob Barr, the Constitution Party has nominated pastor and radio talk show host Chuck Baldwin, and the Green Party has nominated former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. Ralph Nader declined to seek the Green Party nomination and is running as an independent candidate.
The election will coincide with the 2008 Senate elections in thirty-three states, House of Representatives elections in all states, and gubernatorial elections in eleven states, as well as various state referendums and local elections.
As in the 2004 presidential election, the allocation of electoral votes to each state will be based partially on the 2000 Census. The president-elect and vice president-elect are scheduled to be inaugurated on January 20, 2009.
Around the start of the year, support for Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama began rising in the polls, passing longtime front runners Romney and Clinton for first place in Iowa: the two upstart campaigns were triumphant. Suddenly John McCain displaced Rudy Giuliani and Romney as the front-runner in New Hampshire.
While Huckabee had little money and was hoping for a third place finish, Obama was the new front runner in New Hampshire and the Clinton campaign was struggling. However, in a turning point for her campaign, Clinton's voice wavered with emotion in a public interview broadcast live on TV.By the end of that day, Clinton won the primary by 2 points, contrary to the predictions of pollsters who had her as much as twelve points behind on the day of the primary itself. McCain also staged a turnaround victory, having been written off by the pundits and in single digits less than a month before.
With the Republicans stripping Michigan and Florida of half their delegates, the Republican race was based there, while the Democrats focused on Nevada and South Carolina, which were given special permission to have early contests. In South Carolina Obama got 55% of the vote. Meanwhile, McCain managed a small victory in South Carolina, setting him up for a larger and more important victory in Florida soon after.