Barack Obama wins presidency, making history

A nation that was founded by slave owners and seared by civil war and generations of racial strife delivered a smashing electoral college victory to the 47-year-old first-term senator from Illinois, who forged a broad, multiracial, multiethnic coalition. His victory was a leap in the march toward equality: When Obama was born, people with his skin color could not even vote in parts of America, and many were killed for trying.

Obama was winning in every state his party carried four years ago, including Pennsylvania, which McCain had worked vigorously to pry from the Democratic column. Obama was also making significant inroads into Republican turf, carrying Ohio and Virginia, the latter voting Democratic for the first time in more than 40 years. He was also winning the swing states of New Hampshire, Iowa and New Mexico, which backed President Bush in 2004.

The major TV networks and the Associated Press called the race for Obama within minutes of the polls closing, sparking a raucous celebration in Chicago, where hundreds of thousands of celebrants gathered in Grant Park along the city's waterfront.

Giant video screens at the scene were tuned to CNN. Each time the network projected a state as an Obama win, the crowd erupted in cheers. The battleground states produced the loudest roars -- first Pennsylvania, then New Hampshire, then Ohio, then, finally, victory.

Moments later, the Obama campaign announced that McCain had called the president-elect to concede.

Voters also handed Obama a fortified congressional majority, as Democrats picked up several seats in the Senate and in the House. The party knocked off at least two GOP incumbents, including North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole.

McCain, burdened by his party's toxic image, prevailed in a band of states that comprise a shrinking Republican base, mainly in the South, the Plains and parts of the interior West.

In winning the White House, Obama to a large degree remade the electorate: About one in 10 of those casting ballots Tuesday were doing so for the first time. Though that number was about the same as four years ago, most of the newcomers were under age 30, about a fifth were black and a fifth were Latino. That was greater than their share of the overall population, and those groups voted overwhelmingly for Obama.