Why Did Obama Win?

Economic crisis, war and dissatisfaction with the Bush administration’s policies are the main reasons why Obama was elected, factors that led people to consider reform and to make an extreme response to Obama’s slogan of “Change.”

America has at last elected its first black president – Barack Obama – a sign in this era of divided American democracy that, even though America still contains hidden racial discrimination, racial tolerance has already expanded greatly among the American people since the Civil Rights era of the 1960s.

America’s 2008 election played out beneath the backdrop of the financial crisis. Accompanying the crisis was a steep rise in oil prices, which had serious impacts on the lives of average Americans, taking away their sense of security. All of the analysts of this election believed that economic problems would be voters’ biggest concern, including house prices, energy costs, unemployment, etc. On foreign policy, voters were most focused on the Iraq War. Concerning the links between the two issues, Professor James Thurber of American University’s Congressional and Presidential Research Center offered this image: the economic problems can be compared to a singer at center stage, the Iraq War providing the backdrop. Different singers may take the stage, but the background cannot be altered.

In March and April, when the Iraq War and the rise in oil prices commanded most of the public’s attention, Obama’s support was tied with that of Republican candidate John McCain. Even though Obama started to pull ahead of McCain in June and July as he emerged as the Democratic front-runner, as the parties separated for their national conventions in late August and early September, some public opinion polls showed McCain overtaking Obama.

But by mid-September, Obama regained his momentum since, as polls showed, 80% of Americans had begun to believe that the economic crisis was the central concern of the election. At the same time, in America’s most important polls, Obama led McCain on 9 out of 10 issues, including the economy, taxes, medical care and managing the situation in Iraq – all except for the War on Terror, which voters felt McCain would handle better. People were also dissatisfied with the domestic and foreign policies of the Bush administration: 91% of Americans felt that America was on the wrong track, the highest such figure in many years. Furthermore, consumer confidence was on the decline, reaching the lowest levels since 1975.

Thus we can say that economic crisis, war and dissatisfaction with Bush’s policies were the three factors that got Obama elected. These factors produced a psychological shift in people, while Obama’s slogan of “Change” had a great impact and perhaps also made racial factors less consequential in the race than expected.