2008 Mock Election

[Republican_Carpetbagger]

I suspect that this topic has already been done before, but how did John McCain win this site’s 2008 mock presidential election? Considering the left-leaning character of this site, Barack Obama’s near-landslide victory in the actual election, and the overall anti-neocon/anti-Bush/anti-evangelical sympathies that I imagine that most Internet forum posters circa 2008 had, I initially expected Obama to win overwhelmingly. Did the Atlas’s politically savvy users dislike Obama’s attitude (which many found to be irreverent or irresponsible)? Were they drawn to McCain’s professionalism, experience, and moderate politics? Was the character of the Atlas just more right-wing in 2008 than it is now (The hard-right was also arguably a mainstay in the early days of Internet forums)? It’s probably a combination of these if not one that includes other factors that I forgot to mention.