WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama swept to victory as the nation’s first black president Tuesday night in an electoral college landslide that overcame racial barriers as old as America itself. “Change has come,” he told a jubilant hometown Chicago crowd.
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, Iowa and more. He captured Virginia and Indiana, too, the first candidate of his party in 44 years to win either.
Obama’s election capped a meteoric rise — from mere state senator to president-elect in four years.
Spontaneous celebrations erupted from Atlanta to New York and Philadelphia as word of Obama’s victory spread. Supporters filled Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House.
In his first speech as victor, to well over 100,000 people in Grant Park in Chicago, 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.”
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