Biography
John McCain was a United States Senator for Arizona and the Republican Party’s 2008 presidential nominee. He died in 2018.
2008
The FEC’s official compilation records the national popular vote:
| Candidate | Votes | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Barack Obama (D) | 69,498,516 | 52.93% |
| John McCain (R) | 59,948,323 | 45.65% |
| Ralph Nader (I) | 739,034 | 0.56% |
| Bob Barr (L) | 523,715 | 0.40% |
Relevance to This Site
The 2008 election is the one in which digital organizing and small-dollar online fundraising are generally agreed to have decided the shape of a presidential campaign — on the other side. McCain’s campaign is the control case: run against an opponent whose online operation is treated across this site as the founding example of the form, and defeated by nearly ten million votes.
This page does not attribute the outcome to that asymmetry, because nothing cited here measures it. The result is what the record supports.
What Is Not Established Here
Removed in the citation audit: his birth year; the “600,000 Facebook supporters during 2008 campaign” figure; his Senate tenure and his naval service; his 2000 presidential campaign; and the description of his campaigns as having “highlighted the evolving role of the internet in political fundraising and communication”, which asserted a significance the page did not evidence. The FEC compilation gives the 2008 result and nothing else, and nothing else is stated.
Sources
- 01.
Federal Election Commission. Federal Elections 2008: Election Results for the U.S. President, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. (2009). The FEC's official compilation of state-certified results. National popular vote, 2008: Barack Obama (Democrat) 69,498,516 votes, 52.93%; John McCain (Republican) 59,948,323, 45.65%; Ralph Nader (Independent, Peace and Freedom) 739,034, 0.56%; Bob Barr (Libertarian) 523,715, 0.40%; Chuck Baldwin (Constitution/Reform/U.S. Taxpayers) 199,750, 0.15%; Cynthia McKinney (Green, Independent, Mountain) 161,797.