In a historic triumph that overcame racial barriers as old as America itself, Barack Obama was elected the USA’s first black president on Tuesday, November 4, 2008 after a long, bruising campaign during which he rallied his countrymen with the slogans ‘Change we can believe in’ and ‘Yes we can’.

The son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, the Democratic senator from Illinois sealed his victory by defeating Republican Senator John McCain in a string of wins in hard-fought battleground states of Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Iowa.

A huge crowd in Grant Park in Chicago erupted in jubilation at the news of Obama’s victory. Some wept.

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.

In his first speech as president-elect, 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.”

Obama and his running mate, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, eventually took their oaths of office as president and vice-president on January 20, 2009.

As the 44th president, Obama moved into the Oval Office as leader of a country that was in recession and fighting two long wars, one in Iraq, the other in Afghanistan.

The popular vote was close, 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.

In his victory address, Obama has said his first order of presidential business was to tackle the economy. He also pledged to withdraw most US combat troops from Iraq within 16 months.

Fellow Democrats rode his coat-tails to larger majorities in both houses of Congress. They defeated incumbent Republicans and won open seats by turn.

The 47-year-old Illinois senator was little known four years before the election. A widely praised speech at the Democratic National Convention, delivered when he was merely a candidate for the Senate, changed that.

Overnight he became a sought-after surrogate campaigner, and he had scarcely settled into his Senate seat when he began preparing for his run for the White House.

A survey of voters leaving polling places on November 4, 2008 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.

“May God bless whoever wins tonight,” President Bush told dinner guests at the White House.

The Democratic leaders of Congress celebrated in Washington.

“It is not a mandate for a party or ideology but a mandate for change,” said Senate Majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Said Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California: “Tonight the American people have called for a new direction. They have called for change in America.”

Shortly after 11:00 pm in the East, The Associated Press count showed Obama with 338 electoral vote, well over the 270 needed for victory. McCain had 127 after winning states that comprised the normal Republican base.

The nationwide popular vote was remarkably close. Totals from 58 per cent of the nation’s precincts showed Obama with 51 per cent and McCain with 47.9.

Interviews with voters suggested that almost six in 10 women were backing Obama nationwide, while 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 AP survey were based on a preliminary partial sample of nearly 10,000 voters in Election Day polls and in telephone interviews for early voters over the week before the election.