2008 United States presidential election in Alabama explained

Election Name:2008 United States presidential election in Alabama
Country:Alabama
Type:presidential
Ongoing:no
Previous Election:2004 United States presidential election in Alabama
Previous Year:2004
Next Election:2012 United States presidential election in Alabama
Next Year:2012
Election Date:November 4, 2008
Image1:John McCain 2009 Official.jpg
Nominee1:John McCain
Party1:Republican Party (United States)
Home State1:Arizona
Running Mate1:Sarah Palin
Electoral Vote1:9
Popular Vote1:1,266,546
Percentage1:60.32%
Party2:Democratic Party (United States)
Home State2:Illinois
Running Mate2:Joe Biden
Electoral Vote2:0
Popular Vote2:813,479
Percentage2:38.74%
President
Before Election:George W. Bush
Before Party:Republican Party (United States)
After Election:Barack Obama
After Party:Democratic Party (United States)

The 2008 United States presidential election in Alabama took place on November 4, 2008, and was part of the 2008 United States presidential election. Voters chose nine representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

Alabama was won by Republican nominee John McCain by a 21.58% margin of victory. Prior to the election, 17 news organizations considered this a state McCain would win, or a safe red state. Located in the Deep South, Alabama is one of the most conservative states in the country. Republicans have won every presidential election in Alabama since 1980, and the 2008 election was no exception. McCain carried 54 of the state's 67 counties and easily prevailed in Alabama.

Despite McCain's expected victory, Obama did manage to improve on Kerry's performance by two points and was able to reduce his margin of defeat by four points which is attributed to the higher African-American turnout. In addition, Obama's raw vote total was the highest obtained by a Democrat in the state of Alabama until his running mate, Biden, broke his record 12 years later in a historically high turnout election. Obama also managed to flip Jefferson County, the state's most populous county and home to Birmingham, which had not gone Democratic since 1952 and was won by incumbent Senator Jeff Sessions in the concurrent U.S. Senate election. Marengo County also split tickets for Obama and Sessions.

Primaries

Campaign

Predictions

There were 16 news organizations who made state-by-state predictions of the election. Here are their last predictions before election day:

!Source!Ranking
D.C. Political Report[1]
Cook Political Report[2]
The Takeaway[3]
Electoral-vote.com[4]
The Washington PostWashington Post[5]
Politico[6]
RealClearPolitics[7]
FiveThirtyEight
CQ Politics[8]
The New York Times[9]
CNN[10]
NPR
MSNBC
Fox News[11]
Associated Press[12]
Rasmussen Reports[13]

Polling

Opinion polls taken in Alabama prior to the election consistently showed John McCain to be leading Barack Obama by double digits. RealClearPolitics gave the state an average of 56.8% for McCain, compared to 33.5% for Obama.[14] The state was not seriously contested by either campaign.

Fundraising

John McCain raised a total of $1,846,574 in the state. Barack Obama raised $1,734,629.[15]

Advertising and visits

Obama spent almost $264,945. McCain and his interest groups spent just $850.[16] Barack Obama, made at least one stop in the state, a brief visit to the Heritage Club for a Democratic Fundraiser in Huntsville, AL[17]

Analysis

Alabama is one of the most conservative states in the country and one of the most reliably Republican strongholds in presidential elections. Alabama is located in the lower Bible Belt, where many people are values voters who tend to oppose social issues like abortion, gay rights, and immigration. Like most Southern states, Alabama was a one-party state dominated by conservative Democrats for the better part of a century after Reconstruction. However, it swung dramatically to the Republicans in 1964 in opposition to civil rights legislation. Since then, Democrats have carried the state only once, when Jimmy Carter of neighboring Georgia swept most of the South and East Coast. Although Democrats still nominally have a majority of registered voters, the Democrats have only seriously contested the state two other times since Barry Goldwater carried it in 1964; 1976 (A double-digit victory) and 1980. As in much of the Deep South, Alabama Democrats began splitting their tickets as early as the 1940s when the national party became more receptive toward the Civil Rights Movement, and the rise of the religious right in the 1970s only accelerated this trend.

At the time of the election, Alabama had a Republican Governor (Bob Riley), two Republicans in the U.S. Senate (Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions), and five of its seven seats in the U.S. House of Representatives were held by Republicans.

On November 4, 2008, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama predictably lost by a landslide. However, he performed 2% better in 2008 than John Kerry did in 2004 (both by popular vote and by the number of carried counties). In large part, this can be attributed to high turnout of African American voters in Alabama. Notably, Obama carried Jefferson County, which contains the state's largest city of Birmingham,[18] which last supported the official Democratic candidate for president in 1956. Strangely, many news organizations did not project the state's outcome immediately after the polls closed, possibly due to a wavering African American turnout.

Voting in Alabama, like in other states of the Deep South, was heavily polarized by race. According to exit polls, 98% of black Alabamians voted Democratic while 88% of white Alabamians voted Republican.[19] Obama's 12 percent showing among white Alabamians was easily his worst in the nation, and prevented him from having any realistic chance of carrying the state.[20] Ultimately, McCain won by running up massive landslides in the state's suburban areas; several Birmingham, Montgomery and Mobile suburbs gave McCain over 70 percent of the vote. The old-line Dixiecrats in these areas began splitting their tickets as early as the 1940s; apart from Carter, some of these areas haven't supported a Democrat for president since Adlai Stevenson II in 1952.

Racial polarization was why Obama generally improved on Kerry's performance in Central Alabama, where more African Americans live. Conversely, Obama did much worse than Kerry in North Alabama, where fewer blacks live. Racial polarization was also responsible for Alabama's electoral geography: Obama, like other Democrats, won landslides in the Black Belt while losing badly everywhere else. With 60.32% of the popular vote, Alabama proved to be McCain's fifth strongest state in the 2008 election after Oklahoma, Wyoming, Utah and Idaho.[21]

Results

PartyCandidateRunning mateVotesPercentageElectoral votes
RepublicanJohn McCainSarah Palin1,266,54660.32%9
DemocraticBarack ObamaJoe Biden813,47938.74%0
IndependentRalph NaderMatt Gonzalez6,7880.32%0
LibertarianBob BarrWayne Allyn Root4,9910.24%0
ConstitutionChuck BaldwinDarrell Castle4,3100.20%0
Write-in candidates3,7050.18%0
Totals2,099,819100.00%9
[22]

By county

CountyJohn McCain
Republican		Barack Obama
Democratic		Various candidates
Other parties		MarginTotal
%%%%
Autauga17,40373.61%6,09325.77%1450.61%11,31047.84%23,641
Baldwin61,27175.26%19,38623.81%7560.93%41,88551.45%81,413
Barbour5,86650.44%5,69748.99%670.58%1691.45%11,630
Bibb6,26272.44%2,29926.60%830.96%3,96345.84%8,644
Blount20,38984.02%3,52214.51%3561.46%16,86769.51%24,267
Bullock1,39125.69%4,01174.07%130.24%-2,620-48.38%5,415
Butler5,48556.49%4,18843.14%360.37%1,29713.35%9,709
Calhoun32,34865.69%16,33433.17%5601.14%16,01432.52%49,242
Chambers8,06753.94%6,79945.46%900.60%1,2688.48%14,956
Cherokee7,29874.89%2,30623.66%1411.44%4,99251.23%9,745
Chilton13,96078.49%3,67420.66%1510.85%10,28657.83%17,785
Choctaw4,22353.50%3,63646.06%350.44%5877.44%7,894
Clarke7,46655.57%5,91444.02%550.41%1,55211.55%13,435
Clay4,98473.09%1,76025.81%751.10%3,22447.28%6,819
Cleburne5,21680.35%1,16817.99%1081.66%4,04862.36%6,492
Coffee14,91974.12%5,07925.23%1300.65%9,84048.89%20,128
Colbert14,73959.33%9,70339.06%4011.61%5,03620.27%24,843
Conecuh3,47049.98%3,42949.39%440.63%410.59%6,943
Coosa3,24858.39%2,27340.86%420.76%97517.53%5,563
Covington12,44478.82%3,24020.52%1030.65%9,20458.30%15,787
Crenshaw4,31968.65%1,93830.81%340.54%2,38137.84%6,291
Cullman28,89681.85%5,86416.61%5451.53%23,03265.24%35,305
Dale13,88671.87%5,27027.28%1640.85%8,61644.59%19,320
Dallas6,79832.60%13,98667.07%680.33%-7,188-34.47%20,852
DeKalb17,95774.77%5,65823.56%4001.67%12,29951.21%24,015
Elmore25,77775.12%8,30124.19%2370.69%17,47650.93%34,315
Escambia9,37563.89%5,18835.36%1110.76%4,18728.53%14,674
Etowah30,59568.39%13,49730.17%6451.44%17,09838.22%44,737
Fayette5,88373.93%1,99425.06%801.01%3,88948.87%7,957
Franklin8,04868.83%3,46929.67%1761.51%4,57939.16%11,693
Geneva9,41780.78%2,13418.31%1060.90%7,28362.47%11,657
Greene87616.51%4,40883.09%210.40%-3,532-66.58%5,305
Hale3,20038.96%4,98260.65%320.39%-1,782-21.69%8,214
Henry5,58564.58%3,01834.90%450.52%2,56729.68%8,648
Houston29,25470.09%12,22529.29%2560.61%17,02940.80%41,735
Jackson14,08367.47%6,37430.54%4171.99%7,70936.93%20,874
Jefferson149,92147.07%166,12152.15%2,4820.78%-16,200-5.08%318,524
Lamar5,41976.59%1,61422.81%420.60%3,80553.78%7,075
Lauderdale24,06863.16%13,32934.98%7071.86%10,73928.18%38,104
Lawrence9,27763.19%5,16435.18%2391.63%4,11328.01%14,680
Lee32,23059.33%21,49839.57%5971.09%10,73219.76%54,325
Limestone23,59870.33%9,53628.42%4171.24%14,06241.91%33,551
Lowndes1,80924.86%5,44974.87%200.27%-3,640-50.01%7,278
Macon1,39612.83%9,45086.88%310.29%-8,054-74.05%10,877
Madison86,96556.88%64,11741.93%1,8171.19%22,84814.95%152,899
Marengo5,51648.09%5,92651.66%290.29%-410-3.57%11,471
Marion9,53677.18%2,60021.04%2191.78%6,93656.14%12,355
Marshall25,72777.57%7,03821.22%4011.21%18,68956.35%33,166
Mobile98,04954.04%82,18145.30%1,1940.66%15,8688.74%181,424
Monroe6,17554.88%5,02544.66%520.46%1,15010.22%11,252
Montgomery42,03140.13%62,16659.35%5460.52%-20,135-19.22%104,743
Morgan36,01471.26%13,89527.49%6331.26%22,11943.77%50,542
Perry1,67927.26%4,45772.37%230.37%-2,778-45.11%6,159
Pickens5,43453.98%4,59445.63%390.39%8408.35%10,067
Pike8,00457.36%5,87942.13%720.52%2,12515.23%13,955
Randolph7,17569.10%3,06429.51%1451.39%4,11139.59%10,384
Russell8,70546.02%10,08553.32%1250.66%-1,380-7.30%18,915
Shelby69,06076.19%20,62522.75%9581.06%48,43553.44%90,643
St. Clair27,64981.11%6,09117.87%3481.02%21,55863.24%34,088
Sumter1,73124.66%5,26474.99%250.36%-3,533-50.33%7,020
Talladega20,11258.80%13,77940.28%3130.92%6,33318.52%34,204
Tallapoosa13,11667.92%6,06331.40%1320.68%7,05336.52%19,311
Tuscaloosa45,40557.54%32,79641.56%7110.90%12,60915.98%78,912
Walker20,72272.32%7,42025.90%5101.78%13,30246.42%28,652
Washington5,65464.43%3,06734.95%540.61%2,58729.48%8,775
Wilcox1,86828.77%4,61271.02%140.22%-2,744-42.25%6,494
Winston8,10380.78%1,75717.52%1711.71%6,34663.26%10,031
Totals1,266,54660.32%813,47938.74%19,7940.94%453,06721.58%2,099,819

Counties that flipped from Republican to Democratic

By congressional district

Republican John McCain carried six of the state's seven congressional districts, including two districts that were carried by Democrats.

DistrictMcCainObamaRepresentative
61.01%38.38%Jo Bonner
63.42%36.05%Terry Everett (110th Congress)
Bobby Bright (111th Congress)
56.21%43.04%Mike D. Rogers
76.32%22.48%Robert Aderholt
60.91%37.99%Bud Cramer (110th Congress)
Parker Griffith (111th Congress)
75.91%23.28%Spencer Bachus
27.28%72.36%Artur Davis
[23]

Electors

See main article: List of 2008 United States presidential electors.

Technically the voters of Alabama cast their ballots for electors: representatives to the Electoral College. Alabama is allocated 9 electors because it has 7 congressional districts and 2 senators. All candidates who appear on the ballot or qualify to receive write-in votes must submit a list of 9 electors, who pledge to vote for their candidate and his or her running mate. Whoever wins the majority of votes in the state is awarded all 9 electoral votes. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. Although electors are pledged to their candidate and running mate, they are not obligated to vote for them.[24] An elector who votes for someone other than his or her candidate is known as a faithless elector.

The electors of each state and the District of Columbia met on December 15, 2008, to cast their votes for president and vice president. The Electoral College itself never meets as one body. Instead the electors from each state and the District of Columbia met in their respective capitols.

The following were the members of the Electoral College from the state. All 9 were pledged to John McCain and Sarah Palin.[25]

  1. Les Barnett
  2. Will Sellers
  3. Al Blythe
  4. Jack Stiefel
  5. Elbert Peters
  6. Matthew Fridy
  7. Bob Cusanelli
  8. Cam Ward
  9. Jim Wilson

See also

Notes and References

  1. Web site: 2009-01-01. D.C.'s Political Report: The complete source for campaign summaries.. 2021-08-23. https://web.archive.org/web/20090101161206/http://www.dcpoliticalreport.com/Predictions.html. 2009-01-01.
  2. Web site: 2015-05-05. Presidential. 2021-08-23. https://web.archive.org/web/20150505003043/http://cookpolitical.com/presidential. 2015-05-05.
  3. Web site: 2009-04-22. Vote 2008 - The Takeaway - Track the Electoral College vote predictions. 2021-08-23. https://web.archive.org/web/20090422070127/http://vote2008.thetakeaway.org/2008/09/20/track-the-electoral-college-vote-predictions/. 2009-04-22.
  4. Web site: Electoral-vote.com: President, Senate, House Updated Daily. 2021-08-23. electoral-vote.com.
  5. Based on Takeaway
  6. Web site: POLITICO's 2008 Swing State Map - POLITICO.com. 2016-09-22. www.politico.com.
  7. Web site: RealClearPolitics - Electoral Map. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20080605003612/http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/maps/obama_vs_mccain/?map=5. 2008-06-05.
  8. Web site: CQ Presidential Election Maps, 2008. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20090614004022/http://innovation.cq.com/prezMap08. June 14, 2009. December 20, 2009. CQ Politics.
  9. News: Nagourney. Adam. Zeleny. Jeff. Carter. Shan. 2008-11-04. The Electoral Map: Key States. The New York Times. May 26, 2010.
  10. News: 2008-10-31. October  - 2008  - CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs. CNN. May 26, 2010. 2010-06-19. https://web.archive.org/web/20100619013250/http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/. dead.
  11. News: April 27, 2010. Winning The Electoral College. Fox News.
  12. Web site: roadto270. 2016-09-22. hosted.ap.org.
  13. Web site: Election 2008: Electoral College Update - Rasmussen Reports. 2016-09-22. www.rasmussenreports.com.
  14. Web site: Alabama: McCain vs. Obama. May 31, 2009. RealClearPolitics.
  15. Web site: Presidential Campaign Finance: AL Contributions to All Candidates by 3 digit Zip Code. May 30, 2009. Federal Election Commission. https://web.archive.org/web/20090324090259/http://www.fec.gov/DisclosureSearch/MapAppState.do?stateName=AL&cand_id=P00000001. March 24, 2009. dead.
  16. News: Map: Campaign Ad Spending - Election Center 2008 from CNN.com . CNN . May 26, 2010.
  17. News: Map: Campaign Candidate Visits - Election Center 2008 from CNN.com . CNN . May 26, 2010.
  18. Web site: AL US President Race. Our Campaigns. May 27, 2009.
  19. News: Alabama-Election Results 2008. New York Times. 2009-06-10.
  20. [Chuck Todd|Todd, Chuck]
  21. Web site: 2008 Presidential Election Statistics. Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. 2018-03-05.
  22. Web site: Certified General Election Results without write-in appendix . 2008-11-25 . 2008-12-05 . . https://web.archive.org/web/20081127012656/http://www.sos.alabama.gov/downloads/election/2008/general/statecert-2008-general-election-11-25-2008-without-write-in-appendix.pdf . 2008-11-27 . dead .
  23. Web site: Presidential Results by Congressional District, 2000-2008. December 15, 2008. May 31, 2009. Swing State Project.
  24. Web site: Electoral College . 2008-11-01 . . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20081030041546/http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_ec.htm . October 30, 2008 .
  25. Web site: Archived copy . November 7, 2008 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20081119161844/http://www.sos.state.al.us/downloads/election/2008/general/Electors-Pledged-to-Senator-McCain-Republican-Party.pdf . November 19, 2008 .

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