Obama is US president
WASHINGTON – (UPDATE) Americans elected Democrat Barack Obama as their first black president Tuesday, handing him an historic victory over Republican John McCain, US media projected.
Obama was virtually assured of making history Tuesday by becoming America's first black president, after thwarting Republican John McCain's long-shot comeback hopes in an epochal election.
On a dramatic election night that will reshape US politics, Obama took an insurmountable lead by grabbing key states Ohio and Pennsylvania and needed only certain Democratic pickups to be reach the 270 electoral votes needed for victory.
Tens of millions of people had earlier stood in long lines to cast votes with America locked in a moment of deep crisis, mired in the worst financial meltdown since the 1930s and waging two foreign wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Tens of thousands of Obama supporters euphorically waited for the first-term Illinois senator to show up at his massive victory party in downtown Chicago. McCain had so far stayed out of sight in a luxury hotel in his native Arizona.
Democrats were also projected to land major gains in the Senate and House of Representatives and thereby grab a monopoly of power in Washington and usher in a new political era after years of Republican dominance.
Obama had so far amassed 207 electoral votes with McCain on 135, but the mathematics of the US electoral map meant McCain had an impossible task to overhaul his lead.
While television networks stopped short of definitively declaring Obama the victor, many blogs and websites pointed out that the die was already cast.
Two senior McCain aides were quoted by Fox and CNN as saying "there is no path to victory."
Obama gave early notice of the way the night would unfold by capturing the key northeastern state of Pennsylvania -- McCain's best hope of winning a Democratic state and stopping his rival from claiming the White House.
He later added Ohio, the decisive state which swept President George W. Bush to victory in 2004 and another Republican state, Iowa.
No one since John F. Kennedy in 1960 has lost two of the critical triumvirate of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida and gone on to win the presidency.
Florida was too close to call but Obama was outperforming Democratic nominee John Kerry's figures in the state in 2004.
Obama also captured New Mexico, another Republican seat McCain needed to hold to keep his slim White House dreams alive.
Obama also won Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, Maine, New Hampshire, Washington DC, Delaware, Michigan, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, and Minnesota, according to network projections.
McCain captured Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, South Carolina and Oklahoma, Alabama, Arkansas, Wyoming, Louisiana, Kansas, Utah and Texas.
Other normally Republican states, North Carolina, and Virginia were too close-to-call, as was Midwestern Indiana, in another positive sign for Obama.
In the Senate, Democrats wrested control of seats in the traditionally Republican state of Virginia, followed by New Hampshire, North Carolina and New Mexico, to take their tally in the chamber to 54 seats.
Eight seats remained up for grabs, as networks announced that Democrats had won 15 seats and Republicans 12.
Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell clung on, meaning that Democrats were highly unlikely to win the 60 seats they need in the 100-seat chamber needed to frustrate Republican obstruction tactics.
Among the Republican casualties was Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina, wife of former Senate majority leader and defeated 1996 presidential nominee Bob Dole.
CNN reported that exit polls showed that the economy was the top priority, being named by 62 percent of voters, compared to Iraq with 10 percent, terrorism on nine percent and healthcare on nine percent.
Obama made a short election day trip to the Midwestern swing state of Indiana, after casting his vote alongside wife Michelle with daughters Sasha and Malia close by.
"I feel great and it was fun, I had a chance to vote with my daughters," he said.
"I noticed that Michelle took a long time though. I had to check to see who she was voting for," the Hawaiian-born US senator from Illinois, 47, said with a laugh.
McCain kept silent as he voted in his home state of Arizona, but later led a boisterous rally in Grand Junction, Colorado, promising supporters: "We're going to win it."
McCain, a former Vietnam War prisoner would be at 72 the oldest president inaugurated for a first term if elected.
Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and white mother from Kansas, would become the first African-American president after a stunning rise to the pinnacle of US politics.
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