It is tempting to suppose that elections provide democratic leaders with "mandates" that are reasonably specific (grounded in identifiable policy preferences of voters) and proportionate (with landslides producing major policy shifts and more modest victories producing only incremental policy changes). However, historical analysis of U.S. presidential elections provides little support for this supposition.
My interpretation of the 2008 election draws on statistical analyses of previous presidential elections to identify fundamental factors that significantly shaped the outcome, including incumbent party fatigue, an election-year recession, and public disapproval of the incumbent president. I also assess the impact of some extraordinary features of the 2008 contest, including Barack Obama's biracial identity, John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate, the Republican campaign's focus on cultural "issues" like patriotism and elitism, and the financial meltdown that occurred in the midst of the fall campaign.
These unique factors seem to have had surprisingly little net effect on the election outcome, which mostly reflected the same fundamental forces at work in previous elections. Nevertheless, this remarkably ordinary election outcome is likely to have dramatic policy consequences, due in part to the continued high level of ideological polarization among American political elites and in part to a widely-shared perception among both policy-makers and citizens of deepening economic crisis.
My interpretation of the 2008 election draws on statistical analyses of previous presidential elections to identify fundamental factors that significantly shaped the outcome, including incumbent party fatigue, an election-year recession, and public disapproval of the incumbent president. I also assess the impact of some extraordinary features of the 2008 contest, including Barack Obama's biracial identity, John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate, the Republican campaign's focus on cultural "issues" like patriotism and elitism, and the financial meltdown that occurred in the midst of the fall campaign.
These unique factors seem to have had surprisingly little net effect on the election outcome, which mostly reflected the same fundamental forces at work in previous elections. Nevertheless, this remarkably ordinary election outcome is likely to have dramatic policy consequences, due in part to the continued high level of ideological polarization among American political elites and in part to a widely-shared perception among both policy-makers and citizens of deepening economic crisis.
