3 0 92.5% 6.5% | 245,800 17,367 Start date November 4, 2008 | |
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The 2008 United States presidential election took place on November 4, 2008 throughout all 50 states and D.C., which was part of the 2008 United States presidential election. In D.C., voters chose 3 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for President and Vice President.
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The District of Columbia went to Democrat Barack Obama by a margin of 210,403 votes out of 225,224 votes cast, about 92 percentage points of the total vote. Obama's margin was wider than John Kerry's in 2004, when Kerry won the District of Columbia by a margin of about 80 percentage points. D.C. has voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election by large margins since 1964.
Primaries
Results
Bob Barr was certified as a write-in in the District of Columbia, but votes for him weren't counted. Litigation is ongoing to have the votes counted.
Results Breakdown
Each candidate's best result is shown in bold.
Electors
Technically the voters of D.C. cast their ballots for electors: representatives to the Electoral College. D.C. is allocated 3 electors. All candidates who appear on the ballot or qualify to receive write-in votes must submit a list of 3 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 3 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 3 were pledged to Barack Obama and Joe Biden: