Supporters cheer during the election night party for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama at Grant Park in Chicago, Tuesday night
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Democratic Sen. Barack Obama moved within 75 electoral votes of becoming the first African-American president in history on Tuesday night, winning Ohio, Pennsylvania and several other large Eastern and Midwestern states, according to projections by NBC News.Obama won his home state, Illinois. Republican Sen. John McCain was in a close fight in his home state, Arizona, in a race that NBC News said was too close to call.
Overall, Obama had won 195 of the 270 electoral votes he would need to clinch the election, while McCain had won 85.
Obama took Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and New York, all of them states with hefty electoral vote hauls, NBC News projected. McCain won numerous smaller states, primarily in the South.
Ohio was an especially important bellwether.
President Bush won Ohio in 2004, meaning Obama was able to flip a big Republican state even as McCain failed in his quest to turn over Pennsylvania, which Democratic Sen. John Kerry took four years ago.
Record turnout delays key results
Florida and Virginia were also closely watched, but results there and in other important states were expected to be delayed after record numbers of voters flocked to polling stations, energized by an election in which they would select either the nation’s first black president or its first female vice president.
Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, led in nearly all public opinion polls over McCain, a veteran senator from Arizona. Both campaigns launched get-out-the-vote efforts that led to long lines at polling stations in a contest that Democrats were also hoping would help them expand their majorities in both houses of Congress.
Americans were voting in numbers unprecedented since women were given the franchise in 1920. Secretaries of state predicted turnouts approaching 90 percent in Virginia and Colorado and 80 percent or more in big states like Ohio, California, Texas, Virginia, Missouri and Maryland.
At New Shiloh Church Ministries on Mastin Lake in Huntsville, Ala., Stephanie Lacy-Conerly brought along a chair, expecting to stay for hours.
“It’s exciting,” she said. “It’s an historical moment.”