President-elect Barack Obama, his wife Michelle and
daughter Sasha, 7, wave as they take the stage at his
election night party at Grant Park in Chicago. (AP
Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Barack Obama has been elected the nation's first black
president night in a historic triumph that overcame racial
barriers as old as America itself.
The 47-year-old Democratic senator from Illinois sealed his
victory by defeating Republican Sen. John McCain in a string
of wins in hard-fought battleground states - Ohio, Florida,
Virginia and Iowa.
A huge crowd thronged Grant Park in Chicago to cheer Obama's
improbable triumph and await his first public speech as
president-elect.
Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware,
will take their oaths of office as president and vice
president on Jan. 20, 2009.
As the 44th president, Obama will move into the Oval Office
as leader of a country that is almost certainly in recession,
and fighting two long wars, one in Iraq, the other in
Afghanistan.
Earlier, the Illinois senator beat John McCain in Ohio on his
way to building an insurmountable Electoral College advantage
as he bid to become the first black president.
Fellow Democrats are gaining strength in both houses of
Congress.
Obama's Ohio victory denied McCain particularly precious
territory. No Republican has ever won the presidency without
the state.
Earlier, Democrats picked up a Virginia Senate seat and
elected a Missouri governor.
Obama swept to victories in traditionally Democratic states
in the East and Midwest, while McCain countered in the safest
of Republican territory.
That left the battlegrounds to settle the race: Florida,
Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania and more. Most of them were
customarily Republican, but Obama spent millions hoping to
peel away enough to make him the 44th president.
Interviews with voters suggested that almost six in 10 women
were backing Obama, and men leaned his way by a narrow
margin. Just over half of whites supported McCain, giving him
a slim advantage in a group that President Bush carried
overwhelmingly in 2004.
The results of The Associated Press survey were based on a
preliminary partial sample of nearly 10,000 voters in
Election Day polls and in telephone interviews over the past
week for early voters.
The same survey showed the economy was by far the top
Election Day issue. Six in 10 voters said so, and none of the
other top issues - energy, Iraq, terrorism and health care -
was picked by more than one in 10.
The AP made its calls of individual states based on surveys
of voters as they left the polls.
Obama had Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine,
Massachusetts, Maryland and New Jersey, as well as the
District of Columbia, for 78 electoral votes. McCain had
challenged in none of them.
McCain had Kentucky, Tennessee, Oklahoma and South Carolina,
for 34 electoral votes. Obama conceded them from the outset.
The nationwide popular vote also favored Obama, who was
gaining 53 percent to his rival's 47 percent.
The Senate seat that switched from Republican to Democrat was
in Virginia, where former Gov. Mark Warner won his race to
replace retiring Republican John Warner. The two men are not
related.
Missouri's Attorney General, Jay Nixon was elected his
state's governor, replacing a Republican, Matt Blunt, who
retired rather than run again.
The White House was the main prize of the night on which 35
Senate seats and all 435 House seats were at stake. In both
houses, Democrats hoped to pad their existing majorities, and
Republicans braced for losses.
A dozen states elected governors, and ballots across the
country were dotted with issues ranging from taxes to gay
rights.
By tradition, the first handful of ballots were cast just
after midnight in tiny Dixville Notch, N.H. Obama got 15
votes and McCain six.
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