The United States has elected its first African-American president with the victory of Barack Obama in Tuesday's balloting.
The
Democratic Party candidate captured well over the 270 electoral votes
he needed with projected victories in several West Coast states.
Senator Obama has a total of 297 electoral votes to 138 for his
Republican opponent, Senator John McCain.
Hundreds of thousands of Obama supporters
in his hometown of Chicago broke into screams of joy as soon as U.S.
television networks declared him the winner.
McCain's bid for
the White House fell short when he lost several hotly-contested states,
including Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, and Virginia. No Republican had
lost Virginia since 1964.
In his home state of Arizona in the
city of Phoenix, McCain said he called Mr. Obama to congratulate him on
his historic win, noting that the victory is of special significance to
African-Americans.
The White House says President George Bush called Mr. Obama to congratulate him on the win.
Obama's victory ends eight years of Republican control of the White House under President George Bush.
He becomes the first black president in the United States' 232-year history. He will be sworn in on January 20, 2009.
Obama,
not even a national figure just a few short years ago, overtook a host
of Democratic presidential hopefuls, including Senator Hillary Clinton,
to clinch the Democratic Party's nomination for the 2008 presidential
election.
The son of a white American woman and a black Kenyan
man, the 47-year-old Obama burst into the national spotlight after
delivering the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National
Convention. Four years later, he became the party nominee and the first
African-American to win the nomination of a major U.S. political party.
Obama, who was born in Hawaii, spent his youth on the Pacific Island U.S. state, as well as in Indonesia.
Obama
attended Columbia University in New York and set his sights on public
service after graduation, becoming a community organizer in Chicago. He
later attended Harvard Law School and served in the Illinois State
Senate.
He won his U.S. Senate seat by a landslide in 2004.
He
has campaigned on a message of hope and unity, stressing the need to
overcome long-standing political and social divisions. He has also
emphasized his call for change after eight years of Republican control
of the White House under President George Bush.
Obama's wife Michelle is a fellow Harvard Law School graduate. They have two young girls.