LANDSLIDE!!!

Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States, the first African-American elected to the country's highest office.

Cheering, screaming and weeping with joy, an estimated 50,000 Barack Obama supporters welcomed his election Tuesday night in a delirious victory celebration in the senator's hometown.
Many had crammed into Grant Park to be a part of something that would be remembered for generations.

Americans embraced Obama's message of 'change' and handed him victories in all regions, including in a few states that had been Republican strongholds, as Republican nominee John McCain was unable to distance himself from the current president.

Obama's historic victory as the first African-American to hold the nation's highest office casts the United States in a new light globally, after Bush's policies and excesses in the war on terrorism tarnished the superpower's standing in the world.

Obama pledged to revamp the US image and to work more closely with allies. He was greeted by 200,000 enthusiastic supporters during a speech in Berlin, part of a worldwide tour in July to build his foreign-policy credentials.

But US voters, worried about their pocketbooks, made it clear that the country needed to move in a different direction, moving on from a conservative government and electing Obama, regarded as one of the Senate's most left-leaning members.

'Barack Obama certainly seized the opportunities created by President Bush's failures and the country's profound discontent, which only deepened after the economic crash,' Washington Post political columnist EJ Dionne wrote.

Obama promised a clean break from the Bush administration by announcing early in his campaign that he would remove US combat forces from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.

That position could have hurt him over the long run, but by the time he began squaring off with McCain, Iraq's importance had faded, and Americans were ready for change.