WORLD> America
|
WORLD> America
|
|
US Election: Obama awaits victory
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-11-05 07:57 WASHINGTON- Americans waited hours to cast ballots Tuesday, ending a marathon and historic political race expected to make Democrat Barack Obama the country's first black president barring a come-from-behind upset by scrappy Republican John McCain.
A record number of citizens were expected to have cast ballots in an election that stood to change the political face of a nation burdened with its worst economic crisis in nearly 80 years and still fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US economy was by far the top issue on voters' minds. An Associated Press exit poll found six in 10 voters across the United States named the economy as the most important issue facing the country. None of four other issues on the list - energy, Iraq, terror or health care was chosen by more than one in 10. The results are based on a preliminary partial sample of nearly 10,000 voters in Election Day exit polls and telephone interviews over the past week for early voters. With Obama leading in most national and state-by-state pre-election surveys, the first trends in Tuesday's voting were expected shortly after polls close in Indiana, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia at 7 p.m. EST (0000 GMT). Going into Tuesday, Indiana was a toss-up and Obama held a lead in Virginia. Neither state has voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964. Obama's fortunes would rise dramatically with either of those states in his column. A victory for the first-term Illinois senator would appear nearly certain should he hold reliably Democratic Pennsylvania and pick off either Ohio or Florida, both of which gave their huge 47-electoral vote prizes to President George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. To win, one candidate must pile up at least 270 electoral votes in what amounts to a state-by-state election for president. Most pre-vote polling of the states showed Obama near or already above the 270 electoral votes needed for victory. The 538 electoral votes are apportioned among the states roughly according to population. An estimated 187 million voters were eligible, and in an indication of interest in the battle for the White House, about 40 million already had voted as election day dawned. Turnout was heavy. In Virginia, for example, officials estimated nearly 75 percent of eligible voters would cast ballots. Obama was on the verge of stepping through a door opened 145 years ago when Abraham Lincoln, a fellow Illinois politician, issued the Emancipation Proclamation that freed African-Americans from enslavement in the rebellious South in the midst of a wrenching civil war. The Illinois senator would be laying claim to the White House on January 20, only 43 years after the country enacted a law that banned the disenfranchisement of blacks in many Southern states where poll taxes and literacy tests were common at the time. Obama clambered out of political obscurity four years ago with a stunning speech at the Democratic National Convention as he was running a successful campaign to become a US senator from Illinois. He was awaiting Tuesday's 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 US presidents, and one of the least experienced in national political affairs. |
