In a November 8, 2012 essay on “John Updike’s ‘Rabbit Redux’ and White Working-Class Angst” published under the shortened name “Man in the Middle”—an essay that many may have missed—New York Times Book Review Editor Sam Tanenhaus reports,

“John Updike visited The New York Times a week before Election Day in 2008. Whom, I asked him, would Rabbit Angstrom most likely vote for? ‘I’m so for Obama,’ Updike replied, that I can’t imagine creating a character who wouldn’t vote for him.’

“And yet in ‘Rabbit at Rest’—the last novel in the cycle, which concludes with the hero’s death—we discover he cast his final vote for George H.W. Bush.

“When I reminded Updike of this, he looked startled. But he was right about 2008. Obama carried Reading that year, and he did it again on November 6 [2012].”