Why was Obama so underestimated in 2008?

[Agonized-Statism]

I know that the severity of the recession wasn't widely acknowledged until Lehman Brothers collapsed in September, but the economy had clearly taken a turn for the worse since at least 2007 and the potential for a housing bubble-borne financial crisis had been known especially among terminally online Democrats for years by that point. Historical narrative is that the neocons were already widely, obviously hated even by the Republican base, as the 2006 midterms showed. So why were there so many posters in threads like these arguing for anything but a 300+ EV Obama win in Summer 2008? I would have thought that the only question by that point would be how big Obama's landslide was going to be, PUMA raid on the forum prediction map aside. It wasn't like now, where there are enough complicating factors at play to fairly call it a horse race.

[wnwnwn]

The Bush-Obama-Romney-Trump-Trump crowd voted in 2008 for Obama because they didn´t want more of the same after the recession, not because they liked most of his policies (specially his social liberalism). Likely most of them were undecided until the last months.

[Sumner 1868]

Denial over how fast the Bush regime was collapsing combined with barely masked hopes by pundits for a huge racial backlash vote so they could write easy articles.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Low approvals of the Bush administrations and the Republican Party generally coexisted with high personal favorability for McCain. Obama was ahead in the polls in the summer, but not by an overwhelming margin, so it wasn't hard to imagine at that point that McCain would keep it close. 

[Samof94]

It also didn't help McCain picked a horrible choice for his VP candidate.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The economy imploded pretty badly in September. Obama did run a fair amount behind congressional Democrats.

[kwabbit]

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.

[Sir Mohamed]

Because the country never before elected a black man before, and it was widely assumed there would be a huge amount of hidden racist voters who would never admit publically to vote R just because of Obama's background.

[Beet]

The economic collapse in 2008 was very, very late. Even though Lehman collapsed in September, the impact on main street arguably didn't fully kick in until November-January, the winter after the election. Had the election been held a month or two later, Obama could've had an FDR style win.

[Del Tachi]

The problem appears to be definitional. Many posters in the thread you linked shared maps that were quite similar to the final results; they just seem to disagree on what constitutes a "landslide" victory. In 2008, it was more common for people to use the term only for LBJ- or Reagan-like victories, since the 1980s were only two decades ago.

[Progressive Pessimist]

It was unimaginable that America would elect a black President, especially by such a large margin, and the conspiracies against him or the concerns about his experience looked more palpable than they ended up being.

[Mopsus]

The problem appears to be definitional. Many posters in the thread you linked shared maps that were quite similar to the final results; they just seem to disagree on what constitutes a "landslide" victory. In 2008, it was more common for people to use the term only for LBJ- or Reagan-like victories, since the 1980s were only two decades ago.

Yeah, Obama ‘08 looks like a landslide to us now, but he still won fewer electoral votes than Clinton in ‘92 or ‘96 (or Bush in ‘88, or Reagan in ‘84 or ‘80…).

[Mr. Smith]

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.

[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.

[kwabbit]

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.