The official President Obama thread

[steven787]

famousringo said:

steven787 said:

fkusumot said:

numonex said:

Obama only won because 95 to 100% of registered African-Americans voted for him in the poor working class States of the USA. 40% of African-Americans were registered to vote.
In the rich areas, people primarily voted for McCain.
Obama received 51 million votes to McCain's 49 million votes in the US election.

Wrong. Obama currently has 63.7 million popular votes to John McCain's 56.3 million. Where is your god now?

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/president/

Obama: 53%: 64,030,409

McCain: 46%: 56,494,802

Holy Moly, that is quite a majority for a presidential election in the US.  Reagan won 58% in 1984, Johnson won 61% in 1964 but only Reagan in 1980 (50.7%) and Bush in 2004 won by >50% other than those two.

 

More impressive to me is the voter turnout:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_11/015545.php

A little suspect, since they talk about 130 million ballots being cast while only 120 million are accounted for in your numbers here, but they're estimating 64% of voting age citizens cast a ballot. That's about 80% of registered voters. Always exciting to see more people take an interest in these important matters. It's so easy to get disillusioned and apathetic.

Early voting was really helpful for getting people out. The best way I can think of to get more people voting would be to scrap the electoral college. If I were an American, I would feel my vote is pretty meaningless if I didn't live in one of those key swing states.

 

Remember absentee ballots have yet to arrive or be counted in many states, including some where early voting counted as absentee.