Similarities Between Obama And Bush's 2012 Presidential Election

According to Silver, Obama won the election partly due to the failures of the previous president. Obama also seemed to portray all the characteristics that were arguably the exact opposite in comparison to Bush. The main and most argued reason throughout the article was that Obama could be described as urban while Bush was simply rural. Although the rural narratives of previous presidents may have worked in the past, the author, Silver, argues that the American demographics have seen a shift resulting in more urban voters. With the use of statistics to support his argument, Silver expressed in his article that the percentage of urban voters has surpassed the percentage of rural votes that once held an advantage in previous presidential elections.

However, there are other factors that could have potentially influenced the outcome of this presidential election. The factors that influence how a voter will vote include party identification, a candidate’s personality, race, gender, issues, policy, and presidential approval ratings. Silver makes his argument that Obama won the election because his campaigns targeted urban areas while McCain prioritized appealing to the rural population. This certainly could have been influential to more moderate voters, but party identification tends to be relatively stable for most voters carrying over from one election to the next. Instead of focusing on Obama’s campaigning of urban areas as determining his victory, the other highly controversial factor could simply be the low presidential ratings that commonly occur at the end of the president’s term. As a result, the electorate may have been influence by voters, who were most likely moderate, favoring more liberal policies compared to conservative policies approved by Bush. Therefore, this could have potentially lead to Obama’s

However, the article fails to mention any other potential factors contributing to Obama’s victory over McCain. These factors, particularly party identification and approval rating of the previous president, certainly could relate to the argument Silver conducted about Obama’s victory simply being based on his appeal to the highly represented urbanites and suburbanites. It can be observed from numerous presidential elections throughout recent decades that larger cities and suburbs generally lean towards the left side or liberal side and vote for the democratic candidate. Therefore, this could be an explanation also as to why Obama, a democrat, won the vote of urban areas. Although the other reasons accounting for Obama’s winning of the presidential election do not explicitly define his success, there are for sure multiple factors that contributed that the article could have also expanded