Why was Obama so underestimated in 2008?

[Schiff for Senate]

He wasn't, quite the opposite. Yes he was close in the Summer, but that was before Palin and the RNC Bump faded.

IIRC, he led McCain generously during the primaries and then the recession happened and he was given double digits.

He should've flipped Missouri (especially Missouri), Georgia, and Montana along with everything else, and it didn't happen.

Disagree with Georgia. 2008 was too early for it to flip. Obama did what he could in narrowing the GOP margin, and maybe it could've been a point or two narrower still, but idt an outright win was really in the cards at that time. Definitely wouldn't be worth the concentrated investment that would probably have been required for Obama to win it.

[Schiff for Senate]

It got lost with history, understandably given the landslide it turned out to be, but McCain was a very strong candidate and was perhaps the best GOP nominee since Eisenhower. He had very good favorability numbers with independents. If you go back to 2000, he was blowing Gore out to a crazy degree in hypothetical polling. It's kind of a miracle that he won a GOP primary given how out-of-step with the base he was.

Unfortunately for him, he was running against a generational political talent and was saddled first with defending an extremely unpopular administration and then a collapsing economy. Before the economic crash he was keeping it competitive, with a result more akin to 2012.

This. McCain was a very strong candidate, just in a horrendously bad year for his party and against an equally strong opponent.

I recall reading that McCain led in Florida (still the quintessential swing state in the 2000s, of course) for much of the campaign, right until the Lehman Brothers debacle when the economy really took a turn for the worse.

[Schiff for Senate]

It got lost with history, understandably given the landslide it turned out to be, but McCain was a very strong candidate and was perhaps the best GOP nominee since Eisenhower. He had very good favorability numbers with independents. If you go back to 2000, he was blowing Gore out to a crazy degree in hypothetical polling. It's kind of a miracle that he won a GOP primary given how out-of-step with the base he was.

Unfortunately for him, he was running against a generational political talent and was saddled first with defending an extremely unpopular administration and then a collapsing economy. Before the economic crash he was keeping it competitive, with a result more akin to 2012.

This. McCain was a very strong candidate, just in a horrendously bad year for his party and against an equally strong opponent.

I recall reading that McCain led in Florida (still the quintessential swing state in the 2000s, of course) for much of the campaign, right until the Lehman Brothers debacle when the economy really took a turn for the worse.

I found an Electoral College prediction video from June 2008 and it was treated as a safe assumption that McCain would carry Florida.

LMAO. Florida was kind of close for Obama even in the end, but calling it Safe R at any point during the campaign is quite a bold statement to say the least.