Obama becomes president in historic US elections

North Korea News.Net
Tuesday 4th November, 2008

Barack Obama, the 47-year-old first-term senator from Illinois has won the historical election in the US, as the first African-American president.

Obama reached the 270 electoral votes he needed for election at 11 p.m. ET.

Obama swept to victory over Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, whose running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, was seeking to become the nation’s first female vice president.

As expected, Obama won overwhelmingly among African-American voters, but he also took a small majority of white voters.

Women and Latino voters were his biggest supporters and he also won by more than 2-to-1 among voters of all races 30 years old and younger.

A disappointed McCain camp have expressed pride in their Republican candidate, saying that he had put up a good fight in difficult economic times.

Obama will have a broad Democratic Congress on Capitol Hill under his presidency.

The Democrats won strong majorities in both the House and the Senate,

While the election results were proceeding, Mr Obama played his traditional election day basketball game with friends and staff near his home in Hyde Park in Chicago.

Thousands of people have now begun pouring into Chicago's Grant Park for Barack Obama's election night party.

A total of 65,000 supporters received the highly-sought tickets to attend the party.

Locals are calling the sprawling lakefront venue "Obama-rama" and around 1 million people are expected in the surrounding area.

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