Convincing, But Not the Landslide It Could Have Been

Barack Obama’s victory is historic and is also the best showing for a Democrat since Bill Clinton won his second term in 1996 with 379 electoral votes. As of the wee hours of Wednesday morning, long after John McCain had offered a gracious concession speech and Obama had declared victory, two states remained outstanding: North Carolina and Montana. Obama appeared headed toward victory in former and defeat in the latter, thus producing a final electoral vote count of 363-185.

But despite the historic dimensions of this result and its seeming landslide proportions, it’s probably worth noting just how close John McCain came to engineering en Election Day miracle.

In the closing weeks of the campaign, polls consistently showed him trailing by a high single-digit margin, and falling behind – hopelessly in some cases – in virtually every battleground state on the map. Given that virtually every battleground represented a state that George W. Bush won in 2000, McCain seemed on the verge of losing the race in a historic thumping.

But that didn’t quite happen.

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