Here is a look at the county by county breakdown on the 2008 vote.
The Washington Post put together these 2008 election maps.
Obviously there are still more red counties in America:
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But, Barack Obama won much higher margins in the populous blue counties:
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Here is a 2004 US election map as a comparison:
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Via USA Today
Turnout– As of Saturday at 1 PM CST approximately 124,200,000 Americans voted in this election.
In 2004, 122.3 million voted.
So, although there are still votes being counted(?), this year saw only a slight increase in turnout.
George Bush collected 62,040,606 votes in 2004.
John McCain collected 57,358,053 votes (so far) this year.
That’s a difference of 4,682,000 votes.
This is not a condemnation of John McCain.
It was another very difficult year for the GOP.
George Bush took the national security issue off the table. His policies have absolutely decimated al-Qaeda and the radical Islamic movement.
The country does not have to worry about the evil Saddam Hussein regime.
Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are no longer in complete control of Afghanistan.
Iraq was not an issue after the Bush-Petraeus Surge showed such amazing success.
Americans aren’t worried about national security today. They are scared as hell about the economy.
Not even Barack Obama’s radical anti-American past could affect the election.
Obama and Democrats cleaned up.
More… This is interesting:
In 2004 George Bush gained 2,858,000 votes to take Ohio.
In 2008 Barack Obama gained 2,708,988 votes to take Ohio.
The Obama Camp and ACORN were able to increase their turnout in all of the battleground states.
UPDATE: Here’s an interesting spreadsheet showing how the youth vote was a major factor in 2008.
UPDATE 2: As far as a mandate goes… This graph shows the US president’s margin of victory over the last 100 years:
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Via Dave Leip