A Vote Decided by Big Turnout And Big Discontent With GOP

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Waiting for History

On his journey to the White House, Obama drew enthusiastic support -- and often tears -- from his supporters.

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As a debate was breaking out yesterday among McCain advisers over Gov. Sarah Palin's role in the campaign's struggles, exit polls suggested that McCain's running mate had not helped in a broad swath of the electorate. About 60 percent of voters questioned by exit pollsters said they thought Palin was not qualified to be vice president. She did not appear to have helped McCain with women -- a portion of the electorate Obama won by 13 percentage points overall while losing white women by 7 points. Both were improvements over Kerry's numbers.

Palin may have helped, however, in maintaining the Republican hold on white evangelical Christian voters. Despite attempts to cut into this base, Obama managed to improve on Kerry's performance with this group by only four points. Despite worries among Democrats about Obama's chances with Jewish voters, he won more than three-quarters of them, a slight improvement over Kerry. He also improved slightly with white Catholic voters -- although McCain held a narrow majority, which would represent the first time that white Catholics did not side with the winner since exit polling began in 1972.

The discontent in the electorate was palpable. About a quarter of voters said they approved of Bush's job performance, half as many as did when he ran for reelection four years ago. Of the 72 percent who disapproved, two-thirds voted for Obama. Only a fifth of voters thought the country was on the right track, compared with roughly half in 2004.

McCain spent much of the campaign trying to disassociate himself from Bush, proclaiming in his final debate with Obama: "I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago." But when exit pollsters asked voters whether they thought McCain would continue Bush's policies or take the country in a new direction, half of them said McCain would continue on Bush's path. And of those voters, nine in 10 voted for Obama.

Obama led by nine points among the nearly two-thirds of voters who said the economy was the most important issue facing the country. Half of voters said the economy was in "poor" shape, the worst of four options they were given, which was triple the rate four years ago, and Obama appeared to have won two-thirds of them. More than 40 percent of voters said their finances were worse off than four years ago, compared with a quarter who said that in 2004. Seven in 10 of them voted for Obama.

Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta and assistant polling analyst Kyle Dropp contributed to this report.