Based off of the title, you are probably thinking "well, duh, 'House of Cards' doesn’t have the same people and president as real life, so of course it is based off of an alternate universe." So sure, you caught me, I am stating the obvious, but I have a theory about exactly which alternate universe it is set in. Other than all of the fictional characters, "House of Cards" takes place in a world where John McCain beat Obama in the 2008 election. First, I should establish this theory requires that we hold that everything before 2008 was basically the same as our own universe with the only difference being the many other people in office. One might ask why the race wasn’t simply between two completely different presidential candidates. The answer is because for continuity’s sake, the show uses real historical presidents instead of making up different ones when they talk about said past presidents. They want to create the air of similarity and the best way for that to be the case is to say that the 2008 election would have been between Obama and McCain. The universe of "House of Cards" lists every president as the same one in real life until one gets to the 2008 election, when there is oddly no one. Someone must have been president. The turning point–the major event that makes their universe different from our own–is that in that election, McCain becomes president.
One might ask why it had to be McCain rather than Obama that won that election. The answer is that it makes the most sense for a republican to have won the 2008 election. If Obama had won the election in 2008, it would be odd to have a different democrat, such as Walker, be elected to the presidency with no mention of Obama resigning or losing his own primary. It seems obvious that the show is suggesting Walker won a pretty straightforward election meaning he would have had to defeat a republican incumbent. Because we stated the "House of Cards" universe is one which is very similar to our own with the major exception of 2008 which then changes everything else it would make sense for McCain to have been the president that Walker defeats.
This would also explain why the democrats have a majority of representatives in the house. Instead of the republicans gaining an majority of representatives in the house in 2010 due to backlash against Obama, the opposite happened and disdain for President McCain was great enough that people elected more or an equal amount of democrats allowing them to control the house. Coupled with Walker's victory, the democrats were able to keep the House majority.
Indeed these facts seem to come together to support the theory that John McCain must have been the president in 2008 according to "House of Cards." When a show tries to keep continuity with the real world up as much as possible, the most reasonable explanation to why things in that world our different from our own given the facts of their 2012 election prove that the 2008 election must have been very similar to the real world’s election with the only difference being that John McCain, not Obama, became president of the United States.
