The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. Democratic Party nominees Barack Obama, a U.S. Senator from Illinois, and his running mate Joe Biden, a long-time U.S. Senator from Delaware, defeated Republican Party nominees John McCain, a long-time and current U.S. Senator from Arizona, and his running mate Sarah Palin, a Governor of Alaska. Obama became the first African American ever to be elected president of the United States, and Joe Biden became the first Roman Catholic ever elected vice president. 

The incumbent president, George W. Bush, of the Republican Party, was ineligible to be elected to a third term due to term limits in the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution. McCain secured the Republican nomination by March 2008, but the Democratic nomination was marked by a sharp contest between Obama and initial front-runner Senator Hillary Clinton, with Obama not securing the nomination until early June. Early campaigning had focused heavily on the Iraq War and the unpopularity of outgoing Republican President George W. Bush, but all candidates focused on domestic concerns as well, which grew more prominent as the economy experienced the onset of the Great Recession and a major financial crisis that peaked in September 2008.
Was Obama a senator?
Barack Obama, a U.S. Senator from Illinois