Title: United States Presidential Election of 2008 | United States government | Britannica
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United States Presidential Election of 2008
United States government
Witness Barack Obama taking the presidential oath and delivering his inaugural address, January 20, 2009
United States Presidential Election of 2008

Content: United States Presidential Election of 2008 | United States government | Britannica
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United States Presidential Election of 2008
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Witness Barack Obama taking the presidential oath and delivering his inaugural address, January 20, 2009
Barack Obama taking the presidential oath of office and delivering his inaugural address on January 20, 2009, Washington, D.C.
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On November 4, 2008, after a campaign that lasted nearly two years, Americans elected Illinois senator Barack Obama their 44th president. The result was historic, as Obama, a first-term U.S. senator, became, when he was inaugurated on January 20, 2009, the country’s first African American president. He also was the first sitting U.S. senator to win election to the presidency since John F. Kennedy in 1960. With the highest voter turnout rate in four decades, Obama and Delaware senator Joe Biden defeated the Republican ticket of Arizona senator John McCain, who sought to become the oldest person elected president to a first term in U.S. history, and Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who attempted to become the first woman vice president in the country’s history, winning nearly 53 percent of the vote. results of the American presidential election, 2008 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Britannica Quiz
U.S. Presidential History Quiz
The phrase “New Frontier” is associated with which U.S. president? Who was “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen”? Use this in-depth quiz to make every day Presidents’ Day by testing your knowledge of U.S. presidents and first ladies. The 24/7 news cycle and the proliferation of blogs as a means of disseminating information (both factual and erroneous) framed the contest as both campaigns attempted to control the narrative. McCain’s campaign tried to paint Obama as a naive, inexperienced political lightweight who would sit down with the leaders of anti-American regimes in Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela without preconditions, claimed that he was merely a celebrity with little substance (airing an ad comparing Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton), labeled his ideas socialist (hammering away at Obama’s tax policy in particular and pouncing on Obama’s comment to “Joe the Plumber” that he would seek “spread the wealth”), and attacked his association with Bill Ayers, who had cofounded the Weathermen, a group that carried out bombings in the 1960s. Ayers, in 2008 a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago—and constantly called an “unrepentant domestic terrorist” by the McCain campaign—lived a few blocks from Obama in Chicago, contributed to his reelection campaign for the Illinois Senate, and served on an antipoverty board with Obama from 1999 to 2002.