Yes exactly I meant for some people it was very radical to vote for him despite the aggressive McCain/Palin campaign that was painting him as a black foreigner cupboard muslim with a strange un-american name. Imagine those white, MAGA ultra-anti-woke Trump supporters. Some of these voted for Obama twice there is a whole wikipedia page about it. They would be like a feminist Ivy League literature professor voting for Trump now, relative to her demographic it is very radical.

The fact that Obama won so much of electorate implies that there were quite a lot of people who radically went against their usual political leaning. Those voters gave him the benefit of the doubt that he would shake the system.