Federal Election Commission (FEC) Community

The 2008 Presidential Election, scheduled for Tuesday November 4, 2008, will be the 56th consecutive quadrennial United States presidential election and will select the President of the United States and Vice President of the United States.

The Republican Party has chosen John McCain, the senior United States Senator from Arizona as its nominee; Barack Obama, the junior United States Senator from Illinois, has been chosen as the nominee for the Democratic Party. The 2008 election is particularly notable because it is the first time in U.S. history that two sitting senators will run against each other for president, and because it is the first time an African American is a presidential nominee for a major party, as well as the first time both major candidates were born outside the continental United States—Hawaii for Obama and the Panama Canal Zone for McCain. With African American candidate Barack Obama, who is of mixed African and Caucasian parentage, as the Democratic Party nominee for President and John McCain's selection of female Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as the Republican Party nominee for Vice-President, the eventual winning ticket is very likely to have a historic context, as either the first African American will be elected President along with the first Roman Catholic as Vice President or the first woman will be elected Vice President.

The Libertarian Party has nominated former Congressman Bob Barr, the Constitution Party has nominated pastor and radio talk show host Chuck Baldwin, and the Green Party has nominated former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. Ralph Nader declined to seek the Green Party nomination and is running as an independent candidate.

The election will coincide with the 2008 Senate elections in thirty-three states, House of Representatives elections in all states, and gubernatorial elections in eleven states, as well as various state referendums and local elections. As in the 2004 presidential election, the allocation of electoral votes to each state will be based partly on the 2000 Census. The president-elect and vice president-elect are scheduled to be inaugurated on January 20, 2009.