11/04/2008
Barack Obama was elected the nation's first black president Tuesday 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.
A jubilant crowd of thousands gathered in Grant Park across town on an unseasonably mild night. Cheers went up each time Obama was announced the winner in another state. The roar was particularly loud when Pennsylvania fell - the Democratic-leaning state where McCain had tried hardest to break through.
A survey of voters leaving polling places 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.
Obama swept through traditionally Democratic states in the East and Midwest.
McCain countered in normally secure Republican territory.
That left a string of battleground states. All had voted for President Bush in his narrow victory in 2004, but Obama invested heavily in hopes of succeeding Bush as the nation's 44th president.
In addition to Ohio and Iowa, he led narrowly in Florida and by even less in Virginia and North Carolina.
Interviews with voters suggested that almost six in 10 women were backing Obama nationwide, 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 Bush carried overwhelmingly in 2004.
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