Presidential race
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| Sen. John McCain (AP Photo) Click here for McCain bio |
Sen. Barack Obama (AP Photo) Click here for Obama bio |
This year's historic presidential race will determine the successor to recent economic turmoil, uncertainty on Wall Street, and the Iraq War. Tonight's election will also determine whether the nation will elect it's first black president or first female vice-president.
Please check back later tonight for official election results.
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Historic campaign comes to a close as voters hit the polls
After 22 months, thousands of rallies and what was expected to be more than 125 million votes, it’s nearly over.
Senators Barack Obama and John McCain can only sit and wait as voters continue to troop to the polls and volunteers across the country get ready to tally the ballots from an election that could have a record turnout.
With the first African American major party candidate and only the second female vice presidential candidate in history, this election is unlike any other in the nation’s life. It’s a story of unlikely swing states. Most of all, it’s a story of change. Both candidates promised it.
The campaigns
In the weeks leading up to Election Day, Obama has had a solid lead that extended beyond the margin of error in many reliable polls. At a recent election discussion, Washington and Lee Politics Professors Bill Connelly and Robert Strong, along with former Virginia Gov. Linwood Holton, a Republican supporting Obama, all predicted that Obama would win the presidential race.
The Obama campaign capitalized on the recent financial meltdown and its impact on the middle class. The campaign blamed the crisis on the deregulatory policies of the Bush Administration and stressed that reform was needed on Wall Street.
With President Bush’s approval rating at less than 30 percent and the U.S. economy heading toward a recession, the McCain campaign has not had much help from the current administration. The campaign focused much of its effort on convincing voters that McCain was a maverick, outside the Bush administration’s mainstream, and that Obama has too slim a resumé to lead.
Both candidates have received high-profile Republican endorsements. Last week, former Secretary of State Colin Powell crossed party lines and endorsed Obama on NBC’s Sunday morning talk show “Meet the Press.” Vice President Dick Cheney has endorsed McCain.
The candidates
McCain is 25 years older than Obama. Obama was born in Honolulu in 1961; McCain in 1936 at a Naval Air Station in Panama.
Obama was a 25-year-old community organizer when McCain was first elected to the U.S. Senate by his constituency in Arizona..
Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 2004, a few months after the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention put him on the political map. He announced his bid for president in February 2007 and clinched the nomination in June 2008.
McCain, who spent six years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, ran and lost in Republican primaries against President Bush in 2000. The 72-year-old candidate has said that this is the last time he could run for President. He announced his bid in April of 2007 and clinched the nomination last March.
The differences between the two presidential candidates are mirrored in their respective choices for vice president. McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a relative unknown prior to her nomination, in late August. Palin’s appearance on the ticket marks the second time in U.S. election history that a woman has appeared on a major party ticket. The first was Geraldine Ferarro’s vice presidential bid in 1984. McCain’s choice of Palin, considered to be well right of McCain politically, was intended to appeal to the Republican Party’s conservative base.
Obama chose Democratic Sen. Joe Biden from Delaware as his pick for vice president. In the weeks leading up to Biden’s August nomination, rumors floated that Obama might pick Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, who has been a vocal supporter of Obama for more than two years.
The unlikely swing states
Presidential candidates need 270 out of 538 total electoral votes to win. Many states that went for President Bush in 2004, like Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa, were leaning toward Obama as Election Day dawned.
McCain visited seven states Monday, including Florida, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Obama visited Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia.
Both candidates have broken with tradition by campaigning on Election Day.
Of more than three million Virginians voting in 2004, 53 percent chose President Bush and Vice President Cheney, compared to the 45 percent who voted for Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards. The last time Virginia voted to put a Democrat in the White House was in 1964, during Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory.
Obama hopes to be next. And polls showed he might be succeeding.
Virginians have seen McCain, Palin, Obama, and Biden battle it out in their backyards. Both campaigns have visited southwest Virginia, Richmond, and sites in Northern Virginia in hopes of winning Virginia’s 13 electoral votes.
Virginia has added almost a half million new voters, a 9 percent increase since 2004. There are now almost 5 million registered voters in the state.
Despite traditionally Republican tendencies, Virginia has been leaning Democratic in the past few statewide elections. Jim Webb was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006 by fewer than 10,000 votes. His election gave Democrats the majority in the Senate. A year before that, Virginians elected Democrat Tim Kaine to the governorship. Mark Warner, the enormously popular Democratic former governor, has been leading Republican Jim Gilmore by about 30 points in the race for Virginia’s second Senate seat.
The shifting demographics of the rest of the state have not affected solidly Republican Rockbridge County in the past. President Bush won the county with almost 60 percent of the vote in both 2000 and 2004.
On the other hand, the city of Lexington usually votes Democratic. Sen. John Kerry won Lexington with almost 60 percent of the vote in 2004.
Donations to the McCain campaign in the Rockbridge County area have topped $50,000. Total state donations to McCain reach almost $8.5 million. Obama has received almost $14.5 million from Virginians, including $95,000 from the Rockbridge County area. Obama has also put paid staffers in normally red areas of the state this year, an unprecedented move that mirrors the $40,000 extra he received locally.
Produced by
Washington and Lee
journalism students.
Lead Supervisors:
Prof. Brian
Richardson
Prof. Indira Somani
Editing supervisor:
Prof. Pamela Luecke
Reporting Supervisors:
Prof. Doug Cumming
Prof. Indira Somani
Technical supervisor: Michael Todd