Racial Polarization in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election (Report‪)‬

Introduction The 2008 victory of Barack Obama can be considered remarkable in that it was the first time in 32 years that a Democratic candidate won with a majority of the popular vote. Barack Obama received nearly 53 percent of the vote, the highest percentage of any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson's near-record landslide victory in 1964. Moreover, the election of 2008 is only the third time since World War II that a Democratic presidential candidate received a majority of the popular vote. Since 1828, 33 different persons have run for president as the nominee of the Democratic Party, but only three received a popular vote percentage higher than Obama's (Leip). In the Electoral College Obama's victory was even more impressive. He received 68 percent of the electoral votes (365 out of 538) by carrying 28 out of the 50 states ("Election Results 2008"). Two of these states--Virginia and Indiana--had not voted Democratic since 1964. Obama also made inroads in the Republican stronghold of the South by carrying three states of the former Confederacy: North Carolina, Florida, and Virginia, winning the latter two with an outright majority. The fact that a Black candidate made such gains that previous White Democrats were unable to make might be taken by some as an indication that race is no longer a significant factor in U.S. voting behavior. Immediately after the election, some self-styled political pundits proclaimed that Barack Obama's victory was evidence that the U.S. had entered into a "post-racial" era, at least on the political front (Venocchi, 2008). However, a closer look at the exit polling data shows that, like the elections preceding it, in the 2008 election there was very noticeable racial polarization, but having a Black candidate did not increase that polarization.