US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

United States Presidential Election 2008

United States Presidential Election 2008

Introduction

The 56th Election of the President of the United States of America took place on November, 4 2008. In this election, Barack Obama, a Senator from Illinois and a candidate of the Democratic Party, emerged as the winner, and therefore become the 44th President of the United States of America. For the position of Vice President Joe Biden, a Senator from Delaware was elected. On the other hand, Presidential Republican Party nominated Senator John McCain of Arizona as their presidential candidate while Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin contested for the office of Vice President of United States of America. However, there were several other candidates, who did not play a significant role.

Discussion and Analysis

George W. Bush was according to Constitution can no longer run for the presidency as he had served two terms as the president of US. While, Vice President of that time Dick Cheney had made it clear before the election that he had no intentions to run for the President office. Therefore, first time in the history of United States, no candidate for presidency held the office of President or Vice President (Greenwald, Smith, Sriram, Bar-Anan & Nosek, 2009).

The internal party primaries of the Democrats and Republicans began on 3 January 2008 in the state of Iowa. The party conventions to nominate presidential candidates for Democrat took place from 25 to 28 August 2008 in Denver, Colorado, and party conventions for Republicans were held from 1 to 4 September, 2008 at St. Paul, Minnesota. These national party conventions, which always traditionally held in summer, delegates vote of the states for the presidential candidate of the party.

Each state determines the requirements that must be met in order to be named as a candidate on the ballot. Under the Constitution, candidates for the office of President must born in the United States have to be at least 35 years old and at least have given 14 years of age living in the country. However, this limitation affects primarily the Electoral College. Nevertheless, in different states anyone can compete with candidates who may not be President under the Constitution. Therefore, candidate Roger Calero of standing Socialist Workers Party runs for the Presidency in five states on the ballot, even though he is not a citizen of the United States.

Different parties have nominated their own candidate. This happens on party nomination days in which a candidate is selected from the internal party candidates. For the selection of party delegates, the major parties have held general primaries, where citizens can express their support for a candidate (Greenwald, Smith, Sriram, Bar-Anan & Nosek, 2009).

Parties and candidates here are not strictly coupled to each other; therefore, Barack Obama also enjoyed support from local parties in South Carolina and New York nomination, while his opponent John McCain had the support of two regional parties in New York. Ralph Nader, who actually run for the presidency as an independent candidate was nominated by seven regional ...