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The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. Democratic Party nominee Senator Barack Obama and running mate Senator Joe Biden defeated Republican Party nominee Senator John McCain and running mate Governor Sarah Palin. The incumbent president, George W. Bush, 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. Obama would go on to win a decisive victory over McCain, winning both the popular vote and the electoral college, with 365 electoral votes to McCain's 173; he received the largest percentage of the popular vote for a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Obama's successes in obtaining a major party's nomination and winning the general election were both firsts for an African American. Although Hillary Clinton did not win the Democratic nomination, she was the first woman to win a major American party's presidential primary for the purposes of delegate selection when she won the primary in New Hampshire on January 8.〔http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/fast_facts/resources/Firsts.php〕〔http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/fast_facts/elections/preswatch_clinton.php〕 She also was the first woman to be an American presidential candidate in every primary and caucus in every state.〔 Similarly, Sarah Palin became the first woman to appear on a Republican presidential ticket, and the second woman overall to appear on a major party's presidential ticket (after Geraldine Ferraro in 1984). This was notable as the first election since 1952 where neither of the two major candidates were either the incumbent president or vice president. Obama's total vote amount of 69.5 million votes is the highest amount ever won by a presidential candidate. The total of 131 million votes cast in the election represents over 43% of the total U.S. population, the highest share of any presidential election in U.S. history.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.census.gov/popclock/ )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/ )〕 This was also the first election in which neither candidate was born in the contiguous U.S. Obama was born in Hawaii and McCain was born in a military base in Panama. ==Background== In 2004, President George W. Bush won reelection, defeating the Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry. After Republican pickups in the House and Senate in the 2004 elections, Republicans maintained control of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. Bush's approval ratings had been slowly declining from their high point of almost 90% after 9/11, and they were barely 50% by his reelection. Although Bush was reelected with a larger Electoral College margin than in 2000, during his second term, Bush's approval rating dropped more quickly, with the Iraq War and the federal response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 being most detrimental to the public's perception of his job performance. By September 2006, Bush's approval rating was below 40%,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Historical Bush Approval Ratings )〕 and in the November United States Congressional elections 2006, Democrats gained the majority in both houses. Bush's approval ratings dropped for the last two years in office to the 25–37% range.〔(Presidential Job Approval Center ) Gallup.com〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=National Job Approval: President George W. Bush )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「United States presidential election, 2008」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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