North Dakota was won by Republican nominee John McCain by an 8.7% margin of victory.

Polls showed McCain and Democrat Barack Obama running unusually close in a state that gave George W. Bush a 27.4% margin of victory over John Kerry in 2004.

In the end, McCain kept North Dakota in the GOP column but by a much smaller margin than Bush's landslide in 2004.

The final three polls averaged gave Obama leading 45% to 44%, leaving a lot of undecided voters.

[18] North Dakota has been considered a reliably red state for the past 40 years, having voted for the Republican presidential nominee of every election since 1968.

While the polls varied throughout the campaign, McCain's selection of the socially conservative Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his vice presidential running mate played well in North Dakota, a state that has the lowest percentage of nonreligious citizens in the country.

After Palin joined the ticket in late August, McCain then took a double digit lead in the state until October, when polling once again showed a close race between the two candidates in North Dakota.

[21] McCain did well throughout the western and central parts of the state, while Obama won the two majority Native American counties of Rolette (which has not voted Republican since Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952[1]) in the north and Sioux in the south by more than three-to-one.

At the same time, popular incumbent Republican Governor John Hoeven was reelected to a second term in a landslide three-to-one victory over Democrat Tim Mathern and Independent DuWayne Hendrickson.