2008 United States presidential election in Georgia
Updated: Wikipedia source
The 2008 United States presidential election in Georgia took place on November 4, 2008. Voters chose 15 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president. Georgia was won by Republican nominee John McCain with a 5.2% margin of victory. Prior to the election, 15 of 17 news organizations considered this a state McCain would win, or otherwise a red state. It is situated in the Deep South, entrenched in the Bible Belt (the city of Atlanta being an exception). By 2008 it was considered a Republican stronghold, not having been won by a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992, and having given double-digit victories to George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. Georgia voted against George H. W. Bush in 1992 and Donald Trump in 2020 by less than 1%. McCain was able to keep Georgia in the GOP column in 2008 despite the large African American turnout that helped keep his margin of victory within single digits. In this election, Georgia voted 12.48% to the right of the nation at-large. Georgia was one of only two states that voted against Obama in both 2008 and 2012 that his vice president Joe Biden would go on to win in 2020, the other being Arizona. With its 15 electoral votes, Georgia was the second-largest prize for McCain in 2008, behind only Texas. As of the 2024 presidential election, this is the last election in which Chattahoochee County voted Democratic.