The 2008 elections in the United States will surely be remembered most for the historic election of Barack Obama as the first African American president. In a hotly contested and intensely watched presidential campaign, Senator Obama defeated Republican Senator John McCain and won a higher percentage of votes than any Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

Nevertheless, throughout the 2008 presidential election process, gender played a more direct and prominent role than at any time in history. In one election cycle, the country experienced perhaps the two highest-profile candidacies of women in U.S. history. Senator Hillary Clinton emerged as the early front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president, ultimately winning twenty-three state primaries and caucuses in the longest and most competitive presidential nomination process in the modern era. Although Obama ultimately edged out Clinton to become the Democratic nominee, Clinton is the first woman ever to have come close to winning a major party's presidential nomination.

After Barack Obama chose Senator Joe Biden rather than Hillary Clinton as his running mate, Republican John McCain surprised the country and chose a woman, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, as his vice presidential nominee. As the first female Republican candidate for vice president, Palin joined Democrat Geraldine Ferraro, who was Walter Mondale's vice presidential running mate in 1984, as the only women to have ever run on a national ticket.