What determined Barack Obama’s decisive victory in the 2008 presidential election? Politics Prof. Larry Sabato hosted a panel discussion last Tuesday to discuss his latest book, “The Year of Obama.” He was joined by four of his 10 co-authors, Rhodes Cook, Alan Abramowitz, Diana Owen and Justin Sizemore, who addressed this question.
As recently as 2004, more Americans leaned toward Republican views. In 2006, however, a Democratic majority began to form, Cook said. This trend was national, and might help explain why Obama won nine more states than 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, including three states in the South, Midwest and West regions. Obama’s margins of victory were substantial, including a record-setting 3 point lead — three million more votes than John McCain — in California, a state with 55 electoral votes.
Still, will the Democratic majority last? With slim chances for a Republican win in California during the next few years, the Democrats seem to be here to stay, Cook said.
Looking forward to future elections, Abramowitz — a politics professor at Emory University — said he has identified three fundamentals areas that help predict results: the state of the economy, the public’s perception of the incumbent and how long the current party has been in power. These factors are consistent enough that Abramowitz correctly predicted the outcome of the election a year ago.
During the last months of his presidency, former President Bush’s approval ratings hovered around 30 percent. In combination with an economic crisis and eight years of Republican power, the election of a Democratic president in 2008 seemed nearly certain.
That is not to say that Obama’s group of enthusiastic volunteers was irrelevant to the success of his election, however. Rather, because of these fundamentals, their enthusiasm was expected, he said, and Obama’s promise of “change” resounded with voters.
“When the situation favors you, you can spread your message more easily and attract more volunteers,” Abramowitz said.
The United States also saw remarkable demographic change during the past several years that contributed to Obama’s success, Abramowitz added. Between 1992 and 2008, the percentage of non-white Americans doubled, from 13 percent to 26 percent.
Obama led among non-white voters by 21 points, while McCain won the white vote by 12 points — resulting in Obama’s margin of victory of 9.5 million votes.
Younger voters also overwhelmingly supported Obama, as did the growing number of voters with advanced degrees. Given these statistics, the Republican Party must make changes to remain competitive, Abramowitz said.
The Republican Party must attract younger, non-white voters, or hope that Obama’s plans fail, Abramowitz said, adding that the party should abandon fundamentalism and refocus on economic issues.
“Republicans need to convince Americans that they are the competent party once again,” Abramowitz said.
An important factor in shaping voters’ opinions of the government is the media. Owen, a politics professor at Georgetown University, addressed the role of the media in the 2008 presidential election, noting several trends that she predicts will have long-term significance.
Voters are turning more frequently to new media sources for election information, she said. This is partly a result of layoffs throughout the field of journalism; with fewer staff members to cover political campaigns, many news organizations are taking advantage of blogs and technology like text messaging.
Perhaps the most notable trend of the 2008 election was the rise of user-generated material. “Older new media,” including discussion boards, played an increased role in informing voters. Videos posted to YouTube and social networking Web sites also were highly influential because voters are more likely to trust their peers than an unknown journalist, Owen said.
Another trend, the proliferation of citizen journalism, has led to positive and negative consequences. Although these writers can go where mainstream journalists cannot because of newsroom cutbacks, they are untrained and may produce inaccurate information or rumors, Owen said.
Owen also noted a decline in the readership of print newspapers and the corresponding increased attention to online sources and cable television. Television remains the most popular source of campaign information, she said.
More coverage, though, is not necessarily better coverage, the panelists pointed out. Analysis of news programs like MSNBC and FOX found that at some points of the campaign, only about 20 percent of coverage could be considered neutral, and negative coverage often outweighed positive coverage. Programs frequently filled air time with opinions at the expense of presenting unbiased information to viewers.
The public, however, did not necessarily realize that much of the information was biased.
“Most of the public doesn’t know about the quality of their information, but it affects their decision-making,” Owen said. After the infamous Tina Fey impersonation of Sarah Palin on “Saturday Night Live,” a survey found that many voters believed Palin said, “I can see Russia from my house!” She did not.
Considering the souring economy, the nation’s demographic changes and the Obama campaign’s expert handling of new media, a win for the former Illinois senator was not entirely unexpected. But as one audience member pointed out, what happened to Hillary Clinton?
“Hillary was a greater challenger for Obama than McCain,” Abramowitz said. But a mismanaged campaign led to her defeat.
Sharing a conversation he had with an unnamed Clinton staffer, Sabato said he asked what accounted for her failure to win the nomination. Though Clinton’s staff campaigned for the first caucus in Iowa, the staffer said, it considered the following caucuses “irrelevant and didn’t want to waste the money.” Supporters were confident she would gain the nomination after a win in Iowa, Sabato said.
“Any acceptable Democratic candidate would have won the election,” Abramowitz said. For factors both within and out of his control, that candidate was Obama.
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