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 huge throng of cheering supporters.
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.
270 Electoral Votes Needed to win
Barack Obama – 338
John Mc Cain – 139
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.”
