The many statistics of the election

Everyone is pointing out that obvious, that the 2008 Presidential election resulted in the first African American President. What is less well known is that this represented a number of other interesting milestones:

• Barack Obama is actually the first colored person to become the head of state of any majority white Western nation. That is extraordinary when you consider that the US was among the last major white nations to abolish slavery and the last nation, bar South Africa, to abolish segregation. It's the first time that the US is ahead of the curve.


• Actually, most whites should be happy too. Before Barack Obama, all Presidents of the US were from just three racial groups: Irish, Anglo-Saxon (England, Wales) or Germanic (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). No one from any other white background has ever won the Presidency before, which includes all Southern Europeans, Eastern Europeans and Scandinavians. Of course, no other minority race has won either, although some of the prior US Presidents were rumored to have colored antecedants.


• This is only the second time in US history that a non protestant has won on the ticket - Biden is Catholic. The previous one was Kennedy.


• Barack Obama received more votes than any President in US history.


• This is only the third time since FDR that a Democrat has won the majority of the popular vote (Obama received more than 52% of the vote at last count). The only other presidents to have done so were Carter and Johnson. Kennedy, Truman and Clinton never managed the feat.


• A corollary is that the percentage of votes that Obama received was also the highest percentage of votes cast for any Democrat since FDR, save Lyndon Johnson.


• Obama's number of electoral votes, 340+ is actually the historical norm. The only presidents since FDR who failed to receive 300+ votes were Carter and George W. Bush - both with disastrous regimes. The others who were borderline were Truman, Kennedy and Nixon in his first term.


• Missouri appears to be going for McCain. If it does, its only the second time in history that Missouri didn't vote for the President.


• Obama won at least two states: Virginia and Indiana, that have not been carried by a Democrat since LBJ.


• The total spending on the campaign by all parties and their supporters was a staggering $5.3 BN, 27% higher than the 2004 campaign and the most ever spent in the history of Presidential campaigns. To put it in perspective though, it totals less than what US citizens spend on potato chips every year.


• Obama was the first Presidential candidate to refuse public financing since the laws were revised in the mid seventies.


• Obama spent more than $650 MM on his campaign, more than any other Presidential candidate in history. He also set the fundraising record for a single month, with $150 MM in September.


• Obama's campaign was only the second time in history that the Internet had been used so widely as a fundraising tool for a Presidential candidate (the first being Howard Dean), and the first time it was used as the primary fundraising tool by a major party candidate.


• Obama's campaign has reportedly received donations from over 3.2 MM people, the most small donors for a political campaign ever.