2008+Election

The 2008 election was possibly the most revolutionary and controversial election ever to happen in the United States. Barack Obama along with Joe Biden ran for the Democratic party against john McCain and Sarah Palin for the Republican party. Barack Obama was running in order to try to become the first ever African American president in the United States, but that was not all that the Democrats were going for. Before Obama even received the Democratic nomination, he ran against Hillary Clinton in the primary. Clinton also was trying to be revolutionary in that she would have been the first ever female president if she had won the primary and the general election.

In the general election there was great controversy erupting about the possibility of America having it's first African American president. A huge help in giving Obama the Democratic nomination was the role of youth voters throughout the country. In some states Obama received more than 70% of the youth votes. Obama main point of his campaign was for change. He proposed that the American people needed to move away from the ways of the Republican party and move for change and go with the Democrats. Obama was also helped by the Iraq situation in the sense that it was never completely solved while Bush was in office and proposed to remove all troops from Iraq. McCain did not agree that it was as urgent to remove the troops from Iraq, which Obama used as a strategy to tie him to Bush. McCain's healthcare plan was viewed as much less sufficient than Obama's, which also greatly hurt his campaign.

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On the day of the election the United States got the greatest turnout of voters with 131.3 million as oppose to the second highest turnout of 122.3 million in the 2004 election. Although the Democrats had been nervous Obama won the election by a substantial margin. The final tally was 349 to 159 electoral votes in favor of Obama, with Obama winning 53% of the popular vote. Obama was officially the first African American to ever be elected president of the United States. It was a monumental day in United States history.