| Election Name: | 2008 United States presidential election in Connecticut |
| Country: | Connecticut |
| Type: | presidential |
| Ongoing: | no |
| Previous Election: | 2004 United States presidential election in Connecticut |
| Previous Year: | 2004 |
| Next Election: | 2012 United States presidential election in Connecticut |
| Next Year: | 2012 |
| Election Date: | November 4, 2008 |
| Image1: | Obama portrait crop.jpg |
| Nominee1: | Barack Obama |
| Party1: | Democratic Party (United States) |
| Home State1: | Illinois |
| Running Mate1: | Joe Biden |
| Electoral Vote1: | 7 |
| Popular Vote1: | 997,773 |
| Percentage1: | 60.59% |
| Nominee2: | John McCain |
| Party2: | Republican Party (United States) |
| Home State2: | Arizona |
| Running Mate2: | Sarah Palin |
| Electoral Vote2: | 0 |
| Popular Vote2: | 629,428 |
| Percentage2: | 38.22% |
| 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 Connecticut took place on November 4, 2008, and was part of the 2008 United States presidential election. Voters chose seven representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
Connecticut was won by Democratic nominee Barack Obama with a 22.4% margin of victory. Connecticut was one of the six states that had every county - including traditionally Republican Litchfield County - go for Obama, the others being Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Connecticut has not voted for a Republican presidential nominee since 1988 when the state was carried by George H. W. Bush over Michael Dukakis., this is the last election in which Litchfield County voted for the Democratic candidate, also making it the last time any presidential candidate has won every single county in the state.
To date, this is the last time that the city of Torrington and the towns of Barkhamsted, Colebrook, New Hartford, Preston, Scotland, Warren, Warren, and Winchester voted Democratic.
There were 16 news organizations who made state-by-state predictions of the election. Here are their last predictions before election day:
| D.C. Political Report[1] | ||
| Cook Political Report[2] | ||
| The Takeaway[3] | ||
| Electoral-vote.com[4] | ||
| The Washington Post | Washington 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] |
Barack Obama won every single poll taken in the state, and every one of them by a double-digit margin of victory.
John McCain raised a total of $3,966,985. Barack Obama raised $9,727,617.[14]
Obama spent $730,335 while McCain spent nothing on the state.[15] Neither campaign visited the state.[16]
Connecticut is a part of New England, an area of the country that has in recent decades become a Democratic stronghold. The state went Republican in most of the elections from 1948 to 1988, the exceptions being the three in the 1960s. However, following Bill Clinton's narrow victory in the state in 1992, it has not been seriously contested by Republicans since. McCain ceded the state to Obama early on, despite the endorsement of the state's incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-Independent who still caucused with the Democrats but backed McCain for president in 2008.
In 2006, Democrats knocked off two incumbent Republicans and picked up two U.S. House seats in CT-02 and CT-05 (Joe Courtney and Chris Murphy, respectively). Although then-Governor M. Jodi Rell and Lieutenant Governor Michael Fedele were both moderate Republicans, all other statewide offices were held by Democrats. Democrats also enjoyed a supermajority status in both chambers of the Connecticut state legislature.
In 2008, Democrat Jim Himes defeated incumbent Republican Christopher Shays, who was at the time the only Republican member of the U.S. House from New England, for the U.S. House seat in Connecticut's 4th congressional district. This was largely because Obama carried the district with a staggering 60% of the vote—one of his best performances in a Republican-held district. Shays' defeat meant that for the first time in almost 150 years, there were no Republican Representatives from New England. In no other part of the country is a major political party completely shut out. At the state level, Democrats picked up 6 seats in the Connecticut House of Representatives and 1 seat in the Connecticut Senate.
| 2008 United States presidential election in Connecticut | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | Percentage | Electoral votes | ||
| Democratic | Barack Obama | 997,773 | 60.59% | 7 | ||
| Republican | John McCain | 629,428 | 38.22% | 0 | ||
| Independent | Ralph Nader | 19,162 | 1.16% | 0 | ||
| Constitution (Write-in) | Chuck Baldwin (Write-in) | 311 | 0.02% | 0 | ||
| Green (Write-in) | Cynthia A. McKinney (Write-in) | 90 | 0.01% | 0 | ||
| Socialist (Write-in) | Brian Moore (Write-in) | 19 | 0.00% | 0 | ||
| Socialist Workers (Write-in) | Roger Calero (Write-in) | 10 | 0.00% | 0 | ||
| Totals | 1,646,793 | 100.00% | 7 | |||
| Voter turnout (voting age population) | 62.1% | |||||
| County | Barack Obama Democratic | John McCain Republican | Various candidates Other parties | Margin | Total votes cast | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| % | % | % | % | ||||||||||||||||
| Fairfield | 242,936 | 58.72% | 167,736 | 40.54% | 3,059 | 0.74% | 75,200 | 18.18% | 413,741 | ||||||||||
| Hartford | 268,721 | 65.11% | 138,984 | 33.67% | 5,023 | 1.21% | 129,737 | 31.44% | 412,728 | ||||||||||
| Litchfield | 51,041 | 51.57% | 46,173 | 46.66% | 1,752 | 1.77% | 4,868 | 4.91% | 98,966 | ||||||||||
| Middlesex | 52,984 | 60.72% | 32,918 | 37.73% | 1,351 | 1.55% | 20,066 | 22.99% | 87,253 | ||||||||||
| New Haven | 233,589 | 61.01% | 144,650 | 37.78% | 4,647 | 1.22% | 88,939 | 23.23% | 382,886 | ||||||||||
| New London | 74,776 | 59.88% | 48,491 | 38.83% | 1,607 | 1.29% | 26,285 | 21.05% | 124,874 | ||||||||||
| Tolland | 45,043 | 59.67% | 29,266 | 38.76% | 1,182 | 1.57% | 15,777 | 20.91% | 75,501 | ||||||||||
| Windham | 28,673 | 56.39% | 21,210 | 41.72% | 961 | 1.89% | 7,463 | 14.67% | 50,844 | ||||||||||
| Totals | 997,773 | 60.59% | 629,428 | 38.22% | 19,592 | 1.19% | 368,345 | 22.37% | 1,646,793 | ||||||||||
Barack Obama carried all 5 of Connecticut's congressional districts.
| District | McCain | Obama | Representative | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 32.73% | 65.95% | John Larson | ||||
| 40.07% | 58.48% | Joe Courtney | ||||
| 36.28% | 62.50% | Rosa DeLauro | ||||
| 39.64% | 59.70% | Chris Shays (110th Congress) | ||||
| Jim Himes (111th Congress) | ||||||
| 42.40% | 56.34% | Chris Murphy |
See main article: List of 2008 United States presidential electors.
Technically the voters of Connecticut cast their ballots for electors: representatives to the Electoral College. Connecticut is allocated 7 electors because it has 5 congressional districts and 2 senators. All candidates who appear on the ballot or qualify to receive write-in votes must submit a list of 7 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 sevenelectoral 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.[17] 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 7 were pledged to Barack Obama and Joe Biden:[18]