United States presidential election in Kentucky, 2008

Primaries

Predictions

There were 17 news organizations who made state by state predictions of the election. Here are their last predictions before election day:

Polling

McCain won every pre-election poll, almost all of them by a double digit margin and with at least 49% of the vote. The final 3 polls averaged McCain leading 56% to 41%.

Fundraising

John McCain raised a total of $1,220,017. Barack Obama raised $2,394,198.

Advertising and visits

Obama spent $183,738 while a conservative interest groups spent just $212. Each ticket visited the state once.

Analysis

Although Democrats have a majority of Kentucky's voters, the state has traditionally leaned conservative. Since 1964, Kentucky has only gone Democratic three times--Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, both of whom were White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) from the South, whereas Obama was an African American "big-city liberal" from Chicago.

Throughout the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primaries, Barack Obama experienced problems attracting voters in Appalachia, the mountainous region in which Kentucky is included. Kentucky supported Hillary Clinton over Obama by a margin of two-to-one in its primary election in which Obama only won just two counties - Jefferson County, which includes Louisville, and Fayette County, which contains Lexington. Exit polls conducted in the Kentucky Democratic Primary also found that just one out of three Clinton voters would vote for Obama in the general election, while 40% said they would vote for John McCain, and the rest wouldn't even vote.

During the general election, Obama opted not to campaign in Kentucky and preferred to spend his time and money and other resources in battleground states such as North Carolina and Indiana. Opinion polling in Kentucky showed McCain leading the state safely over Obama.

McCain carried Kentucky by 16.22 points on Election Day, although his margin of victory was slightly smaller than George W. Bush's in 2004. A number of counties in the state's southeastern coal-mining region, a union stronghold for more than a century, voted Republican for the first time since Ronald Reagan's 1984 landslide. These counties had been the bedrock of Bill Clinton's 1992 and 1996 victories. On the other hand, Obama did much better in the largest cities of Louisville and Lexington, improving upon Kerry's performance by double-digits in both.

Kentucky was the first state called for John McCain on Election Night. It was called almost as soon as the polls closed, an hour after Vermont was the first state called for Barack Obama.

At the same time, incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, who also served as Senate Minority Leader at the time, was just narrowly reelected with 52.97% of the vote to Democrat Bruce Lunsford's 47.03%. Republicans also held onto an open seat vacated by Ron Lewis in Kentucky's 2nd Congressional District. At the state level, however, Democrats picked up two seats in the Kentucky House of Representatives.

By congressional district

John McCain carried five of the state's six congressional districts, including one of the two districts held by a Democrat.

Electors

Technically the voters of Kentucky cast their ballots for electors: representatives to the Electoral College. Kentucky is allocated 8 electors because it has 6 congressional districts and 2 senators. All candidates who appear on the ballot or qualify to receive write-in votes must submit a list of 8 electors, who pledge to vote for their candidate and his or her running mate. Whoever wins the majority of votes in the state is awarded all 8 electoral votes. Their chosen electors then vote for President and Vice President. Although electors are pledged to their candidate and running mate, they are not obligated to vote for them. An elector who votes for someone other than his or her candidate is known as a faithless elector.

The electors of each state and the District of Columbia met on December 15, 2008 to cast their votes for President and Vice President. The Electoral College itself never meets as one body. Instead the electors from each state and the District of Columbia met in their respective capitols.

The following were the members of the Electoral College from the state. All 8 were pledged to John McCain and Sarah Palin:

1. James Henry Snider
2. Walter A. Baker
3. Edna M. Fulkerson
4. Amy B. Towles
5. Nancy Mitchell
6. Don Ball
7. Robert Gable
8. Elizabeth G. Thomas