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Democrat Barack Obama wins US presidency
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-11-05 09:07
WASHINGTON – Barack Obama swept to victory as the first black president in the US history Tuesday night in an electoral college landslide that overcame racial barriers as old as America itself. "Change has come," he told a huge throng of cheering supporters. In his first speech as victor, Obama catalogued the challenges ahead. "The greatest of a lifetime," he said, "two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century." The son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, the Democratic senator from Illinois sealed his historic triumph by defeating Republican Sen. John McCain in a string of wins in hard-fought battleground states -- Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Iowa and more. In his speech, Obama invoked the words of Lincoln and echoed John F. Kennedy. McCain called his former rival to concede defeat -- and the end of his own 10-year quest for the White House. "The American people have spoken, and spoken clearly," McCain told disappointed supporters in Arizona.
"We have come to the end of a long journey," McCain said. "I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him but offering our next president our goodwill." President Bushadded his congratulations from the White House, where his tenure runs out on Jan. 20. "May God bless whoever wins tonight," he had told dinner guests earlier. The popular vote was close -- 51.3 percent to 47.5 percent with 73 percent of all US precincts counted -- but not the count in the Electoral College, where it mattered most. There, Obama's audacious decision to contest McCain in states that hadn't gone Democratic in years paid rich dividends. [Latest tally of projected electoral votes] In Washington, the Democratic leaders of Congress celebrated. "It is not a mandate for a party or ideology but a mandate for change," said Senate Majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada. |
