President Barack Obama

made 508 campaign promises in 2008. We’ve been tracking each one; we’ll tell you what percentages of them are in categories including Kept, Compromise and Broken.

Four years ago, Barack Obama made an extraordinary number of campaign promises — 508 — covering issues as diverse as taxes and whaling. We’ve been tracking each one and have rated them on our Obameter, a five-level scale from Stalled to Promise Kept.

With the end of the 2012 campaign, we thought it was a good time for a status report. We’ve rated 38 percent as Kept, 17 percent Compromise and 18 percent Broken. An additional 19 percent are still rated In the Works, and 7 percent are Stalled.

We’ve reached a final rating for 371 promises, about 73 percent of the total. We’ll be updating the rest before President Obama’s second-term inauguration Jan. 21.

(We have two promises not rated because they were conditional on the nation having a major natural disaster, which did not occur in Obama’s first 3 ½ years. We expect to address them in the next month after we assess the administration’s response to Hurricane Sandy.)

Browse the Obameter and you’ll find a wide range of promises, some big, some small, some broad policy goals, some wonky specifics. Our Obameter database includes high-profile commitments to kill Osama bin Laden (Kept), pass immigration reform (Broken) and sign a universal health care bill (Kept).

Not every promise grabbed national headlines. For instance, Obama swore to give tax breaks to artists for donating their work (Broken); he said he would strengthen international rules against commercial whaling (Compromise); and he promised to double funding for a reversecommuting program to help inner-city residents travel to work in the suburbs (Broken).

The Obameter database re- flects Obama’s priorities in the 2008 campaign. He made 52 pledges about health care and 52 about energy. Foreign policy and education also ranked high, with 32 and 31 promises, respectively. Those four categories account for nearly one-third of Obama’s promises.

Of the four, Obama did best on education, where he earned a Promise Kept for 65 percent of those with a final rating. On health care, energy and foreign policy, we gave him a Promise Kept for roughly half of those with final ratings.

Obama scored well on vows about space, the arts and veterans, but poorly on immigration, taxes and workers.

Of course, not all promises are created equal. Some matter more to voters than others. That’s why we also tracked Obama’s performance on his most significant promises, such as withdrawing troops from Iraq (Kept), strengthening security along the Southwest border (Compromise) and implementing a new cap-and-trade system to reduce climate change (Broken).

DAVID GOLDMAN / ASSOCIATED PRESS President Barack Obama made 508 promises four years ago. PolitiFact says that he kept 38 percent, broke 18 percent while 17 percent were rated compromise. The jury’s out on others.