WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama built a formidable lead in his bid to become the first black president Tuesday night, pushing ahead of John McCain in a nation clamoring for change. Fellow Democrats took four Senate seats from Republicans, and reached for more.
Obama gained precious ground in Pennsylvania, winning the state’s 21 electoral votes and depriving McCain of the Democratic-leaning state where he had tried hardest to break through. Obama also swept through territory typically friendly to Democrats in the East and Midwest.
McCain countered in the safest of Republican states.
That left the battlegrounds to settle the race: Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado and more. Most were customarily Republican, but Obama spent millions hoping to peel away enough to make him the 44th president, and his triumph in Pennsylvania left the Republican with scant room for error.
“May God bless whoever wins tonight,” President Bush told dinner guests at the White House, according to spokeswoman Dana Perino.
A jubilant crowd of thousands gathered in Grant Park in downtown Chicago on an unseasonably mild night, confident it would be Obama. They reacted each time Obama was announced the winner in another state — and the cheers were particularly loud when Pennsylvania fell.
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.
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 led in electoral votes with 175 of the 270 needed to win the White House. McCain had 61.
The Democrat’s states included Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland and New Jersey, as well as the District of Columbia.
McCain had Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Alabama, South Carolina and North Dakota.
The nationwide popular vote was remarkably close. Totals from 13 percent of the nation’s precincts showed Obama with 49.9 percent and McCain with 49.2.
Democrats celebrated Senate successes in Virginia, where former Gov. Mark Warner won an open seat, in New Mexico, where Rep. Tom Udall did likewise. In New Hampshire, former Gov., Jeanne Shaheen defeated Republican Sen. John Sununu in a rematch of their 2002 race, and North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole fell to Democrat Kay Hagan.
That wasn’t the end of the Democratic targets, though. Republicans all but conceded in advance they would lose a seat in Colorado, and perhaps elsewhere.
Democrats also looked for gains in the House. They found their first in Florida, defeating Rep. Tom Feeney.
The resurgent Democrats also elected a governor in one of the nation’s traditional bellwether states when Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon won his race.
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.
An estimated 187 million voters were registered, and in an indication of interest in the battle for the White House, 40 million or so had already voted as Election Day dawned. Turnout was heavy. In Virginia, for example, officials estimated nearly 75 percent of eligible voters would cast ballots.
Obama awaited the results at home in Chicago after a marathon campaign across 21 months and 49 states. At 47, with only four years in the Senate, he sought election as one of the youngest presidents, and one of the least experienced in national political affairs.
That wasn’t what set the Illinois senator apart, though — neither from his rivals nor from the 43 men who had served as president since the nation’s founding more than two centuries ago. A black man, he confronted a previously unbreakable barrier as he campaigned on twin themes of change and hope in uncertain times.
McCain, a prisoner of war during Vietnam, a generation older than his rival at 72, waited in Arizona to learn the outcome of the election. It was his second try for the White House, following his defeat in the battle for the GOP nomination in 2000.
A conservative, he stressed his maverick’s streak. And a Republican, he did what he could to separate himself from an unpopular president.
For the most part, the two presidential candidates and their running mates, Republican Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska and Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, spent weeks campaigning in states that went for Bush four years ago. Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada drew most of their time. Pennsylvania also drew attention as McCain sought to invade traditionally Democratic turf.
McCain and Obama each won contested nominations — the Democrat outdistancing former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton — and promptly set out to claim the mantle of change.
“I am not George W. Bush,” McCain said in one debate.
Obama retorted that he might as well be, telling audiences in state after state that the Republican had voted with the president 90 percent of the time across eight years of the Bush administration.
The race was easily the costliest in history, in excess of $1 billion, more after the congressional campaigns were counted.
McCain accepted federal matching funds, and was limited to $84 million for the fall campaign.
After first saying he would go along, Obama reversed course, then raised and spent multiples of what his rival was allowed.
McCain sought to make an issue of that, saying Obama had broken his word to the public. For weeks on end, he could not match his rival’s television advertising onslaught.
Figures through mid-October showed Obama had spent roughly $240 million on television and radio advertisements.
McCain had shelled out about $115 million, and the Republican National Committee an additional $80 million on his behalf.
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA – Outside a poll at the William Ramsey Recreation Center in West Alexandria, Va., I spoke with an Obama volunteer named Claudia Waller, 69, who has watched her community change twice in the past 50 years. First, in the 1960s, African-Americans started buying quarter-acre lots on her street, and she was happy to see it. Then, in the past 20 years, her neighborhood shared Northern Virginia’s influx of foreign immigrants. Waller was happy to see the Vietnamese and Salvadorans and Ethiopians, who, she says, all hang out at Starbucks. “All the brown people go down there and you can hear Ethiopian here, Hispanic over there,” she said. “They must drink coffee all day.”
West Alexandria is an example of how changing demographics has changed the way the Old Dominion votes, and not just because rapid growth in the Washington suburbs has tipped the balance of power away from the redder downstate Virginia.
Despite its reputation as the land of soccer moms and government work-bots, much of Northern Virginia’s growth has come not from white suburbanites but from nonwhite immigrants. Northern Virginia has doubled its minority population in the past 20 years, mostly through immigration. Hispanics and Asians count for 21 and 15 percent, respectively, of the increase in the state’s voting population. Large enclaves of Ethiopians and the East Coast’s largest Vietnamese population have made close-in cities like Arlington and Alexandria a destination for Washington foodies — and a source of Democratic votes. While the Vietnamese skew Republican, most of the other burgeoning immigrant groups vote Democratic.
Turnout this morning in Virginia was roughly double past levels, with 40 percent of 5 million registered voters voting before noon. Democratic Party officials expect a record turnout at polls in traditional African-American enclaves, like Hampton Roads, and the areas that have seen the most new immigration, places likes Loudoun and Prince William counties, both among the nation’s fast growing counties, where some people waited for three hours to vote Tuesday morning. The wait was just as long at John Adams Elementary School in West Alexandria, where the line stretched around a long suburban block at 5 a.m.
In the rec center parking lot, I met Tefera Bezabeh, 38, who moved here from Ethiopia six years ago. He had just cast his vote, for Barack Obama, and was in a hurry to leave so he could start giving free rides to elderly and disabled voters. This is Bezabeh’s first time voting, ever. “In Ethiopia we don’t have such kind of democracy, ” he said. “It’s exciting, you know.” Bezabeh knows exactly why he supports Obama: healthcare. Like most cabdrivers, Bezabeh is a freelancer and doesn’t receive health or retirement benefits from his employer. He takes home about $9,000 a year, and there isn’t enough left over for healthcare. Medicare covers his two children, ages 5 and one and a half, but he and his wife just pray they don’t get sick. “God protect us,” he said. “It’s very scary.”
– Angela Valdez, Salon.com
By BETH FOUHY – 18 minutes ago
PHOENIX (AP) — Republican John McCain bid farewell Tuesday to the reporters and photographers who traveled the country with him during the presidential contest, calling the campaign “a great experience, full of memories.”
McCain came back to the press cabin with his wife, Cindy, to say goodbye during the final flight of Straight Talk Air. The group traveled between a visit to a call center in Albuquerque, N.M., and Phoenix, where the GOP nominee was holding his election night celebration.
“My friends, it’s our last flight on this airplane,” McCain told the assembled group as cameras clicked and digital tape recorders whirred.
“I’m feeling good, feeling confident about the way things have turned out,” McCain said. “We’ve had a great ride, a great experience full of memories that we will always treasure.”
He reminisced about the early days after his campaign imploded in July 2007, when just a handful of reporters continued following him around New Hampshire and other early primary states. He came back to win his party’s nomination this past March.
“Those are the ones that went around in the van with us and on the $39.99 flight to Manchester,” he joked.
McCain, long known as one of the most media friendly and accessible politicians, all but abandoned the signature “straight talk” rides with reporters aboard his campaign bus and plane this past summer as campaign advisers tried to impose greater message discipline.
He took a handful of questions from the traveling press on Sept. 23 in Michigan, but his last full-blown news conference was Aug. 13.
McCain told the media Tuesday: “So anyway we’ve had a great time and I wish you every success, I look forward to being with you in the future. Thanks very much.”
ABC News
The Dole reign has ended in North Carolina as Democrat Kay Hagan upset incumbent Sen. Elizabeth Dole, marking the first time in 35 years that the state has not voted a Republican into the Senate.
In New Hampshire, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen grabbed another seat for her party in a win against incumbent Republican Sen. John Sununu.
The new balance of power now has Democrats leading Republicans 48-31, with another 14 races still to be decided tonight.
Having served in both President Ronald Reagan’s and George H.W. Bush’s presidential administrations before becoming the first female senator from North Carolina, Dole’s legacy seemed almost impossible to overcome when the campaign season began.
But a large turnout of early African-American voters in North Carolina offered an indication that Sen. Barack Obama’s relentless campaigning in the state may have paid off for Hagan.
“This is an example of a Democratic senator riding on Obama’s coattails,” said Jennifer Duffy, the senior editor at The Cook Political Report. “At least 500,000 early voters have been African-American, and Elizabeth Dole isn’t getting those votes.”
A negative campaign ad released by Dole just days before election that referred to Hagan as “godless” created controversy and may have led to Dole’s demise.
In the ad, Dole suggested that Hagan received money from the “Godless Americans” PAC, and an actress with a voice similar to Hagan’s was heard saying, “There is no God.”
In an ad of her own later that same day, Hagan defended herself and called Dole’s add “offensive.”
“I believe in God,” Hagan says in the ad. “I taught Sunday School.”
“My faith guides my life and Sen. Dole knows it,” said Hagan, who has since filed a defamation lawsuit against Dole over the ad.
In New Hampshire, polling numbers showed Shaheen leading Sununu throughout the race.
Despite Sununu’s well-known name — his father once helped run the White House, and the Sununu family is as prominent as you get in state Republican quarters — he was unable to fend off the Democratic challenger.
In the days leading up to the election, presidential historian Julian Zelizer said that “A loss for Sununu would be a lost Northeastern Republican.”
Barack Obama has so far picked up 102 electoral votes, to McCain’s 34.
By RUSSELL GOLDMAN, ABC
As the polls close on the east coast, Barack Obama is sweeping through Northeast state and is projected to win Pennsylvania, a battleground state that John McCain saw as a potential key to winning the election.
Besides Pennsylvania, Obama is also projected to win New Hampshire, another state where McCain campaigned in closing days in the hopes of capturing its electoral votes.
Other states projected to be in Obama’s column according to exit polls are Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Washington DC, Delaware, Illinois, and three of Maine’s four electoral votes.
McCain is projected to win Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina and Oklahoma.
Obama’s projected victory in Pennsylvania which has 21 electoral votes was a blow to McCain’s White House hopes. While it was carried by Democrat John Kerry in 2004, McCain had hoped to turn it into a red state.
“We’re going to win Pennsylvania tomorrow and I’m going to be the President of the United States,” McCain said at a rally Monday. “Pennsylvania will do it, and Pittsburgh will be the important area.”
There is still not enough information to project a winner in the battleground state of Virginia and Indiana.
Virginia has become a key to both candidates’ strategies, with Obama having outgunned McCain in the ground-game fight for the state.
Early exit polls found that Virginians were contacted more frequently by Obama campaign workers and believed that McCain unfairly attacked his Democratic rival.
Fifty-one percent of Virginia voters said they were personally contacted by an Obama campaign worker, versus 37 percent who were contacted by the McCain campaign.
Some 69 percent of voters in that state said McCain unfairly attacked Obama, versus 46 percent who thought Obama unfairly attacked McCain. In the final weeks of the campaign, McCain made negative attacks a mainstay of his race, going after Obama on his relationships and questioning his judgment.
The economy is nationally the overwhelming issue for voters casting their ballots in today’s historic presidential election, according to early exit polls.
Despite the possibility of Obama becoming the nation’s first black president, the turnout of black voters as a percentage of the national vote was at 13 percent, just slightly higher than in 2004, according to early exit polls.
The economy has long dominated the campaign, and voters’ concerns became heightened when the major banks and credit markets needed a massive federal bailout to avoid a fiscal catastrophe.
Four in 10 voters say their family’s financial situation is worse than it was four years ago, and eight in 10 are worried the current economic crisis will hurt their family finances over the next year.
