a shining moment like america had opened a new chapter in its difficult and frequently shameful history with race. but it wasn t true. even as obama took that oath, researchers were going back through the 2008 election, running through the numbers, running through the polls and finding that far from being a post-racial election, it was an usually racial election. seth stevens davidowitz a researcher at harvard tested this in a very interesting way. first he ranked areas of the country based on how often they entered racist search terms into google. then compared obama s share of the vote in those areas with john kerry s share of the vote from the 04 election. just an election cycle ago. the result? he found that obama had lost 3% to 5% of the popular vote compared to what you would have expected from kerry s results. or, as he put it, obama s race, quote, gave his opponent the equivalent of a home-state advantage countrywide. the racialization of politics continued after the election