Larry J. Sabato on The 2008 Election in Perspective: Just What We Would Have Expected
The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming book, The Year of Obama: How Barack Obama Won the White House. The book, which features several frequent Crystal Ball contributors as well as other journalists and scholars, will be published by Pearson Longman in March 2009.
–The Editors
Some readers will be very surprised by our title. The last outcome they would have expected from Election Year 2008 was the elevation of Barack Obama to the White House. And Obama’s swift rise was certainly a surprise. Yet fundamentally, the November 4th outcome was completely predictable, and in fact we predicted it right here on the Crystal Ball many months prior to the election.
Elections are often over-analyzed, and perhaps we have just committed that venial sin here on The Crystal Ball website. The welter of data and circumstance can overwhelm students of history, when the simple, straight-forward explanations are often the most compelling.
The truth is this: Any mainstream Democratic candidate was destined to win in 2008, when the age-old slogan, “It’s Time for a Change,” had powerful new meaning. The electoral conditions–the fundamentals I often call “the north stars of politics”–could not have been more clear or bright in the sky. The north stars that applied to the 2008 contest were presidential popularity, economic conditions, and war and peace.