Obama sweeps to historic victory

Democrat Barack Obama, the 47-year-old son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, decisively won election yesterday as the nation's first African American president, a victory that seemed unthinkable a generation ago.

Embracing Obama's message of hope and call for change in the direction of the country, voters repudiated an unpopular president and his party during a time of war and economic uncertainty. In cities across the nation, crowds spilled into the streets to celebrate, including outside the White House.

The first-term senator from Illinois will be sworn in Jan. 20 as the 44th president, and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware as vice president.

Republican John McCain called Obama to concede a little after 11 p.m., bringing to a close a marathon presidential campaign of nearly two years. President Bush also called to congratulate him.

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer," Obama told hundreds of thousands of delirious supporters gathered last night in Chicago's Grant Park.

"Change has come to America," he said.

Obama's convincing win, along with the Democrats' increased congressional majorities, could provide momentum to his policy priorities he promised in the campaign: withdrawal from Iraq; health-care insurance for all; and a government-funded push for renewable energy.

Obama claimed an electoral-vote landslide, punctuating the victory by carrying battleground states that Bush won four years ago - including Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada - along with Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. As of early this morning, he also topped 51 percent in the popular vote.

McCain hailed the historic nature of Obama's victory as he appeared before dejected supporters in Phoenix.

"I've always believed that America offers opportunity to all that have the industry and will to seize it," said McCain, flanked by his wife, Cindy, and running mate Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd. "Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on earth. Sen. Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and for his country. I applaud him for it."

Democrats also added to their majorities in both chambers of Congress, gaining at least 20 House seats and five Senate seats. It will be the first time since 1994, during President Bill Clinton's first term, that the Democrats will hold power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

A record number of voters, estimated at 130 million, cast ballots to pick a new leader in a tumultuous time for a nation fighting two wars and facing its deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Lines to vote formed before sunrise in many states, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and polling stations in the Philadelphia region were flooded with voters.

Voters were angry about the nation's economic downturn and hungry for change, according to exit polls. Historically, it is difficult for the party that holds the White House to win a presidential election when the economy sours.

McCain had to struggle with that inherent political weight. Then, in September, the stock market's steep drop and the crisis that threatened venerable U.S. financial institutions made his task all the more difficult.

McCain's campaign had heavily targeted Pennsylvania, which Democrats have carried in the last four presidential elections, as a state it could flip to the Republican column. But Obama prevailed.

"A lot of it has to do with his message of change, and his strength of character - people saw a steady leader during economic crisis," said Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D., Pa.), one of Obama's earliest backers in the state. Casey was in Chicago yesterday, where he played in Obama's traditional Election Day basketball game.

Obama had lost Pennsylvania by 9 percentage points to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York in the April Democratic primary, a contest that showed he was having difficulty connecting with white working-class voters. But yesterday, Obama swept even northeastern Pennsylvania, the working-class region around Scranton, home to Casey and hometown to Biden.

Ohio sealed President Bush's 2004 reelection, and no Republican has ever won the White House without carrying the state.

McCain, an Arizona senator, ran strongly in the South, capturing a number of traditionally GOP states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Exit polls showed an electorate that was primed for change, with three out of four voters saying the country was on the wrong track.

Voters rendered their verdict after the longest and costliest presidential campaign in U.S. history, a wild ride of nearly two years with more twists and turns than a paperback thriller.

Obama's viability seemed improbable when he challenged Clinton, the former first lady who was considered the inevitable Democratic nominee when the first-term Illinois senator announced his presidential run in February 2007.

He won the Iowa caucuses in January and was defeated the next week in New Hampshire, beginning a long and bitter fight with Clinton that stretched into early June before Obama accumulated enough delegates to claim the nomination.

Obama relentlessly pushed a message of change, paying special attention to the needs of the middle class, an approach that matched up well with the concerns of a restive electorate.

Preliminary exit-poll results indicated that 6 in 10 voters called the economy the most important issue in the election, followed by 10 percent who said the war in Iraq was the most important.

"The Democrats have a better economic plan than the Republicans. The country is in distress," said Obama supporter Raymond Coleman, 34, who voted for the first time since 1996 in Willingboro, N.J.

Coleman said he was proud to vote for a fellow African American but, more important, he said: "Republicans have done a horrible job of running this country, and that's not an opinion - that's a fact."

The presidential campaign obliterated records, from the number of votes cast during the long, bitter primary season to the millions raised and spent during the general election after Obama reneged on his pledge to accept public financing.

McCain was limited to $84 million in public money for the fall, allowing Obama, who had raised $640 million by mid-October, to outspend him 4-1 on television during the home stretch of the race.

In addition to its obvious import in light of America's tortured racial history, Obama's victory represents a passing of the guard to a new generation of leadership. He had no part of the divisions of the 1960s that have bedeviled U.S. politics for so long.

At 47, with only four years in the Senate, Obama will be one of the youngest - and least experienced - presidents in history

McCain, 72, a prisoner of war during Vietnam, was a generation older than his rival. It was his second try for the White House, following his defeat in the battle for the GOP nomination in 2000.

Throughout the campaign, McCain struggled to separate himself from Bush in voters' minds as Obama tattooed him as representing a de facto third term for the unpopular incumbent.

McCain had broken often with Bush over big issues, including the use of torture against terrorism suspects and campaign-finance limits, but his economic policy was built around continuing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

Obama wanted to allow those cuts to expire and target tax cuts to the middle class. McCain argued that Obama would stifle job-creating investment, noting that many small businesses pay the individual income tax.

Early this morning, a few hundred young people gathered outside Philadelphia's City Hall for an impromptu celebration of Obama's victory. They banged pots and pans and waved towels.

Four young men, stopped at a traffic light, climbed out of their car and stood on the roof. Another group climbed a statue and shouted: "O-Ba-Ma!"

"I felt just like we made history," said Erika Ransom, 22, a senior at Temple University. "I feel like we accomplished so much tonight. I thought about Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and the Freedom Riders."