The beginning and the end of the 2008 General Election campaign were remarkably stable. Initially, after Barack Obama wrapped up the Democratic nomination, he was ahead of John McCain by four to seven points just about every night for the entire month of June. At the other end of the campaign, Obama was consistently up by about five to seven points for the last 40 days of the campaign.

Those results aren’t all that surprising given a political environment that let the Democrats build a substantial early identification edge. Four years earlier, the number of Republicans and Democrats in the country were essentially even. By Election Day 2008, however, the Democrats had built an eight-point advantage. It is reasonable to conclude that the baseline for the campaign was a five-to-eight point advantage for the Democratic candidate, and Obama’s lead was in that range every day but one in the last six weeks of the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Other polling, typically involving smaller numbers of interviews, was cited by some to show a more volatile campaign. Those on the political left frequently took hope in polls showing double digit leads for Obama while conservatives managed to find polls that showed the race to be a toss-up. A less partisan assessment noted that these polls on the extremes tended to offset each other.

Some polls were even volatile enough to show swings of nearly 10 points in a single week, moving the race from toss-up status to double-digits and back. However, a broader look at the data shows that Obama held a modest but steady lead for the final six weeks of the campaign. There were no wild swings during the closing weeks of the campaign which took its final form in the days following the September 15 collapse of the Lehman Brothers financial services firm.

While the stable leads enjoyed by Obama at the beginning and end of Election 2008 were unsurprising, what happened in between defied expectations. From the beginning of July until mid-September, McCain did consistently better than Obama’s five-or-six point baseline advantage.

That period was the only time during Election 2008 when McCain’s message connected on a visceral level with the top issue of concern to voters—the economy. In late June, at a time when gas prices were soaring, McCain began pushing for offshore oil drilling. While offshore drilling was very popular with voters, the real value for McCain was that he was seen as fighting the political status quo on behalf of beleaguered consumers.

The Obama camp was caught flat-footed on the issue and initially seemed to think McCain had made a mistake. Democrats initially disputed the notion that offshore drilling was politically popular and even attacked Rasmussen Reports polling that documented the voter support. Next, they tried to make the case that offshore drilling would do nothing to lower the price of oil for a decade. But that didn’t dent the support for drilling or limit the political advantage for McCain.

The Republican was within a point or two of Obama just about every day in August.

It took a while, but Team Obama finally realized that the issue was not offshore drilling itself but the fact that Americans were looking for a solution that involved finding more energy rather than conservation that would require lifestyle changes. Gradually, Obama walked back off the limb on the issue. He started talking about drilling as one part of a larger solution. By the end of September, the Democratic-led Congress let the ban on offshore drilling expire.

By then, of course, the issue of rising gas prices had been replaced as the nation's primary economic concern. It is impossible to overstate the impact of the Lehman Brothers collapse and the ensuing Wall Street meltdown on the presidential campaign. On the day before Lehman collapsed, McCain had reached the 50% level of support for the first and only time. He was up by three percentage points over Obama. A week-and-a-half later, Obama was up by five percentage points. The Democrat reached the 50% level of support on September 26 and stayed in the 50% to 52% range every day after that until Election Day.

During that period, neither McCain nor Obama had a clear idea of how to respond. Obama had the good sense to recognize that if you have nothing to say, don’t say anything. McCain thrashed around with what seemed like a different sound bite every day starting with his ill-fated description of the economy as fundamentally sound (a view shared by only 26% of voters).

The shift was especially jarring when compared to his earlier messaging. When gas prices were the issue of the day, McCain had a policy position he could deliver with perfect pitch. However, when the economic debate shifted to Wall Street's problems, McCain’s response was off-key.

The first presidential debate fell in that period as well, highlighting McCain’s erratic performance with his on-again, off-again participation. The debate itself began the process of reassuring voters who were leaning towards Obama but still unsure. Over the final several weeks of the campaign, the number of Obama supporters who said they might change their mind steadily declined. It should be noted that Obama’s edge in the debates was at least partially the result of practice: He had many one-on-one debates with a skilled opponent during the primary season. While Obama improved his skills against Hillary Clinton, McCain had no one-on-one debate practice on his path to the nomination.

Obama found his voice during this stretch by promising that 95% of Americans would receive a tax cut under his plans. The message was repeated over and over in a consistent and upbeat manner. With the economy clearly in trouble and a nation that believes tax cuts are good for the economy, this was a good way to show Obama was not just another tax-and-spend liberal Democrat. By Election Day, 31% of voters expected a tax cut under an Obama Administration while only 11% thought the same would happen if McCain was elected.

As with McCain’s call for offshore oil drilling, the impact of Obama’s promised tax cut was more important for what it symbolized rather than the specifics of the policy. As Election Day approached, it was Obama’s message that viscerally resonated with voters.

Obama won the White House by campaigning against an unpopular incumbent in a time of economic anxiety and lingering foreign policy concerns. He offered voters an upbeat message, praised the nation as a land of opportunity, promised tax cuts to just about everyone and overcame doubts about his experience with a strong performance in the presidential debates. As noted in a Wall Street Journal article by Scott Rasmussen, this was also the approach used a generation ago by Ronald Reagan.

Of course, there were countless subplots to Election 2008, some of interest only to political junkies and some that were noticed by those who have a life outside of politics and government. Rev. Jeremiah Wright's racially-charged sermons temporarily raised some concerns about Obama, concerns that were largely put to rest by the candidate’s own demeanor. McCain's choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate energized the Republican base and limited the number of GOP voters who bolted for a third-party candidate. Voters perceived a strong media bias in favor of Obama but discounted much of what they heard from reporters with an agenda.

Credit must must be given to the Obama campaign team, though. During the summer when McCain was scoring points on offshore drilling, they did not panic but kept working their plan. On the message itself, Obama gradually pulled back to less politically damaging positions rather than acting rashly to improvise some new policy position.

Obama's campaign, flush with unprecedented amounts of money, also kept pouring resources into traditional Republican states like Florida and North Carolina even as some Democrats were concerned that it should be narrowing its focus to “essential” states like Ohio. McCain, limited by his decision to accept public financing for his campaign, was at a clear disadvantage moneywise, and it was the efforts of Obama's summer campaign that put him in a position to win Florida and North Carolina following the events of September 15. Both the message and resource allocation decisions reflected a well-deserved confidence in their campaign strategy. Obama's team was not to be distracted by short-term tactical advantages that might help them win a news cycle.

But, at the end of the day, voters made a decision between the candidates themselves. McCain made it close for a few months when he was able to articulate a message that resonated with middle-class concerns about rising gas prices and their impact on the economy. In the end, however, Obama won with a message that resonated with those same voters about larger economic concerns.