Besides Obama Running A Great Campaign...

[Free Bird]

Go

[Bojack Horseman]

Voted bad economy, but also Bush 2.0, plus it was the Democrats’ turn anyway.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Having no choice but to run on 8 years of W would have been difficult.

Rolling the dice on Palin and getting snake eyes was a huge setback.

But being the Republican candidate right as the Recession was crashing was doom. He didn't handle it well, but I don't think there was any way for any GOP candidate to handle it well.

[TheSaint250]

Having no choice but to run on 8 years of W would have been difficult.

Rolling the dice on Palin and getting snake eyes was a huge setback.

But being the Republican candidate right as the Recession was crashing was doom. He didn't handle it well, but I don't think there was any way for any GOP candidate to handle it well.

This, especially with his admitting that the economy was his weakest point.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

This question seems to assume that McCain managed to screw things up significantly worse than a generic R would have done, which seems incorrect to me. Fact is, all the 2008 GOP candidates would have been blown out at similar (or greater) margins under those conditions.

[IceSpear]

He should've lost worse. Despite Obama's "landslide", the fact that he could only get 53% in a perfect storm for the Democrats (due to all the factors you listed and more) was a clue that the polarization of the Bush years was here to stay.

[pbrower2a]

Recession, for which McCain was not at fault, but still -- McCain had no viable solutions for the economic distress. Palin was of course a political catastrophe for not staying on message but messing up the English language about as badly as the late Casey Stengel. With Stengel it was funny. With her it was sickening.

Obama was going to win -- barely -- without the bungled campaign of his opponent.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Recession, for which McCain was not at fault, but still -- McCain had no viable solutions for the economic distress. Palin was of course a political catastrophe for not staying on message but messing up the English language about as badly as the late Casey Stengel. With Stengel it was funny. With her it was sickening.

Obama was going to win -- barely -- without the bungled campaign of his opponent.

This, for the most part.

I thought McCain suspending his campaign to deal with the economy was a terrible move.  It heightened the expectation that he'd come up with some kind of comprehensive solution for the economic crisis and it sunk him when he appeared to not having much of a grasp of what was going on in the economy at that time.

[Politician]

The 8-year cycle and the economy.

[Sir Mohamed]

The economy was the major factor why this election turned out to be the way it was.

[Person Man]

I am beginning to think that who is in the WH given the state of the economy has less to do than how the economy is doing. If people are doing well, they will vote GOP, else Dem. This doesn't really hold up for midterm elections.

[dw93]

All those factors you listed.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

McCain lost badly because the economy was in total free fall. That made much more of a difference than Obama's campaign.

[Mr. Smith]

Palin.

Any other pick, and McCain might have lost by the same margin Romney did. The media is (and was) too polarized for more than a 4 point win under conventional circumstances.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

Palin.

Any other pick, and McCain might have lost by the same margin Romney did. The media is (and was) too polarized for more than a 4 point win under conventional circumstances.

Mccain would have lost by 6+ regardless. The economy was in freefall. People become depolarized when the economy is in the gutter for very obvious reasons.


I don't get how anyone can say the economy wasn't the biggest factor.

[Hammy]

Recession and Bush's unpopularity were clearly the biggest factors.

[Young Conservative]

Palin actually helped him.

[emailking]

I don't get how anyone can say the economy wasn't the biggest factor.

Because you can't do a replay of the election with the economy doing something different. And even if you could, there's a zillion other things coorrelate with that. So there's no way to actually know. And in some sense, the question is ill defined.

[pbrower2a]

Obama was ahead of McCain throughout the summer except during the short bump after the Republican National Convention. The margin was small, though, enough that bungled campaigning by Obama would have caused hm to lose. 

[TDAS04]

All of the above.  Considering all of them, it’s amazing he still got 46% of the vote (but then again, so did Trump 8 years later).

[AndyHogan14]

For me, Palin. I was ready to vote for McCain (in order to protect Democratic control of Congress) until he chose her as his running-mate.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

All of the above.  Considering all of them, it’s amazing he still got 46% of the vote (but then again, so did Trump 8 years later).

Mccain was personally very popular, even with democratic leaning people. Had almost 60% favorability ratings.

[Lord Admirale]

Really it was the recession. McCain was the strongest they had in 2008, any other GOPer (with the exclusion of maybe Giuliani) would've lost by a wider margin.