The vote difference between Obama and McCain was 7.4M or 6.2% of the votes cast. Had just over 3.7M of those voters not voted for Obama but instead voted for McCain, the election would have gone the other way. So essentially, a hair over 3.1% of the total voters made the difference. There are appoximately 200M people of voting age in the country, and just over 300M people overall, so 1.8% of the age eligible voting pool and 1.2% of the overall population is all that stands between one candidate and the other. While 6.2% may be a large margin with respect to presidential politics, 1.8% of adults in the US is hardly a huge mandate.

While I think Obama ran a successful campaign, I think the numbers speak to the lack of a REAL choice in this election. I believe people in large part are simply frustrated with what has been going on in Washington for so long, that while the hype about them would lead us to believe otherwise, these elections are ultimately a slightly weighted flip of the coin. Until a candidate or party actually is willing to make the hard choices it take to solve the huge budgetary issues of entitlements and national debt and debt service that are like an albatross around our economy and our national agenda, these elections will continue to be about the same as they have for the last few cycles, near toss-ups. I hope that Obama finds the courage and the will to find a spending side solution to the budget.