Posted by Jed Lewison on Sun Aug 31, 2008 at 5:33 PM Pacific

Comparing careers: Obama leads McCain in total votes won

Guest post by barath

Right or wrong, in a democracy, the voters ultimately decide. They judge the candidates and cast their lot with one or the other. Put differently, the number of votes a candidate has received in his or her lifetime is an upper limit on the number of Americans that have judged that candidate to be worthy of support. So how many Americans have judged McCain and Obama worthy of support?

Well, it turns out that since 1982, Barack Obama has earned more votes (21.6 million) than John McCain (19.5 million).

Here's the numbers:

Votes McCain has received in his career:
2008 (presidential primary), 9,840,746
2004 (senate), 1,505,372
2000 (presidential primary), 6,061,332
1998 (senate), 696,577
1992 (senate), 771,395
1986 (senate), 521,850
1984 (house), 162,418
1982 (house), 89,116
= 19,648,806 votes

Votes Obama has received in his career:
2008 (presidential primary), 17,869,542
2004 (senate), 3,597,456
2002 (state senate), 48,717
1998 (state senate), 45,486
1996 (state senate), unknown
= 21,561,201 votes

These numbers omit state-level primaries, which are negligible, such as McCain's two Arizona Republican house/senate primaries and Obama's two Illinois Democratic state senate/senate primaries.

The bottom line is that more voters have evaluated, made a judgment, and cast their ballot in support of Obama than they have for McCain, despite the fact that McCain is 25 years older than Obama.