Arizona was won by Republican nominee and native son John McCain with an 8.48% margin of victory over Democrat Barack Obama. McCain had served as United States Senator from the state since 1987, and enjoyed high approval ratings. Prior to the election, sixteen of seventeen news organizations considered this a state McCain would win, or a red state. Some polls taken near Election Day in 2008 showed Democrat Barack Obama closer than expected to winning it, but these did not come to fruition, as McCain easily won Arizona and carried all but four of the state's 15 counties.[1] Nonetheless, this was closer than any of McCain's Senate campaigns.
Obama became the first Democrat to win the White House without winning Gila, Greenlee, La Paz, or Pinal Counties since Arizona statehood in 1912, as well as the first to do so without winning Navajo County since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Twelve years later, in 2020, Obama's running mate and former vice president Joe Biden won the state of Arizona, in part due to votes from supporters of McCain, who had an aggrieved relationship with Biden's opponent, then-incumbent president and Republican nominee Donald Trump, prior to McCain's death in 2018. This remains the last election where Arizona voted to the right of Missouri, Montana, South Dakota and Indiana.
