Barack Obama’s national vote margin over John McCain yesterday looks to be about seven percent, around what the polls said it would be. By comparison, George W Bush defeated John Kerry by 2.4 percent in 2004 and lost to Al Gore by 0.5 percent in 2000.
But the gap is not as large as Bill Clinton’s in 1996, which was around eight. And for really big ones, around twenty percent or more, see Reagan v Mondale (1984), Nixon v McGovern (1972) and Johnson v Goldwater (1964).
(These also dwarf Kevin Rudd’s 2007 margin over John Howard of 5.4 percent.)
Apparently a majority of white people voted for McCain, but were swamped by African Americans (who constitute about 13 percent of the population) and Hispanics (about 15 percent of Americans). Obama-voters may have constituted about these these respective percentages of each group: the low forties; mid nineties; and mid seventies. Turnout is another variable.
But Democrat Jimmy Carter was also said to lose among white voters in 1976 and perhaps the same was true of Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Latino numbers have grown a lot since the 1970s, and even since the 1990s, which must benefit the Democrats.
As is the way of elections, everything the winner did will be deemed brilliant, and everything the loser did was hopeless. But McCain’s only big blunder was in choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate. It was after that that Obama’s opinion poll leads blew out.
‘The Palin effect’ is a phrase that will probably never be coined, but it should be. It would signify a dramatic move that sends a party’s base into rapturous high fives, and appeals to voters on some level, but still sends the middle ground running to the other candidate. We had something similar in Australia with Mark Latham in 2003-4.
Conservative Australian commentators proved more susceptible to the Palin effect phenomenon than their more grounded American counterparts.
After the 2004 election loss, wackier Democrats complained that if the left-wing Howard Dean had been the candidate, he would have defeated Bush. Similarly, today a few souls on the other side are not only maintaining Palin was a plus, but that she should be Republican candidate in 2012!
That’s called throwing good money after bad.
If Sarah Palin surfaces around 2012 it’ll most likely be in a flashback to history moment on late night TV. It could also be spotlighting her as a grand mom for the umpteenth time or reporting she shot another moose or she changed her optometrist. Nothing of consequence politically. She’s had her five weeks of fame that was enough for everyone.
Bill Kristol must have heartburn this morning because very few other republicans of note wanted anything to do with Sarah Palin.
Tina Fey did the world a great service.
Yeah, Tina Fey should get a campaign medal. Valorous and Satirical Service on the Late Night Comedy Front, something like that.
If she elects to run, she will be formidable. Four years hence, there will be alot more ” objective” data on which to assess the new administration. No more ‘hope” and “change” but the real deal. Has the homeland remained safe, have there been further attacks, as an undoubetedly emboldened radical islam makes it moves, have Americans seen any real wealth creation or will it just be ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ and have the assaults on the unborn come to fruition? She will have learnt alot from her first encounter into the federal sphere. God’s speed to her!
McCain’s poll numbers started to slide as the Couric interviews came out – ie at least four days before the Lehmans bankruptcy. If you think Palin was not, in the end, a net drag on McCain then you have simply not been paying attention.