Barack Obama Set To Become US President After Early Results

Senator Barack Obama is poised to win the White House and seize his place in history as the first African American US president after the state of Ohio was called in his favour by major US networks.Fox News, ABC News and CNN all forecast he would win a state which was critical to Republican Senator John McCain's route to victory. It leaves John McCain needing to spring a very big surprise in the remaining states.

He would have to take a state won by Democrat John Kerry in 2004. He has already failed in his major Democratic target, Pennsylvania, despite making two dozen visits in the last few months. Or he would need to win a state in the western time zone, where polls are due to close three hours behind the east coast. Mr Obama, however, had solid leads the polls in that region going into election day.

With 20 seats in the electoral college, Ohio is one of the biggest prizes and was crucial to both candidates. Mr Bush won it in 2004, when it helped him reach 286 electoral seats, 16 over the winning figure of 270. Without Ohio, Mr McCain's forecast total falls to 266.Nicole Wallace, a senior adviser to Mr McCain, said: "At this point our vote is in the hands of voters still going to the polls. This was always going to be difficult."

There was a groan in the ballroom of the luxury hotel where Mr McCain's supporters were gathered to watch the results come in on giant screens.Networks also projected Mr Obama as the winner in Vermont, Massachusetts, Illinois, Maine, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland and the District of Columbia.John McCain, his Republican opponent, was projected the winner in Kentucky, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee and West Virginia.

With nearly a third of the votes counted in Indiana, a conservative state that has voted Republican since 1964, Mr Obama was just three percentage points behind and performing much better than expected in areas Mr McCain was counting on.

Virginia also appeared close, with Mr McCain leading by 10 percentage points with a third of the vote counted but the Democratic strongholds still to report and the Republican underperforming in conservative rural areas. A win there for Mr Obama would almost certainly signal a convincing overall victory for him.

One early disappointment for Mr Obama, however, was that black voters made up just 13 per cent of all voters, only a narrow increase over 2004. The black vote was unchanged in Virginia but up by five percentage points to 30 per cent in Georgia, a target state for Mr Obama.Six out of 10 voters said in an Associated Press exit poll that the economy was the most important issue facing the country, a concern Mr Obama has made the centerpiece of his campaign.

Officials said the long queues and heavy early voting in more than 30 states pointed towards a turnout of between 130 million and 140 million people, up from 121 million four years ago, and 65 per cent of those registered.This would represent the highest percentage turnout since 1908. Mr Obama's campaign, which heavily outgunned Mr McCain's in terms of the number of volunteer, fundraising and enthusiasm had poured immense resources into registering new voters.

High turnout was a key sign that David Plouffe, Mr Obama's campaign manager, had had succeeded. Even as voting was taking place, Mr Obama visited Indiana, a state that had not gone Democratic since 1964 - an indication of his confidence and his desire to secure a broad mandate to govern.In a Fox News exit poll, some 57 per cent of voters said they felt Mr Obama was is in touch with people like them compared to just 40 per cent saying the same of Mr McCain.

More than half of voters told Fox that the US government should do more to solve problems, another positive indication for Mr Obama. A third of voters said they would be excited if Mr Obama won but a mere 12 per cent believed they would feel the same way if Mr McCain prevailed.

The Drudge Report teased other early exit poll results, declaring that they showed "Obama big" nationally. Republicans cautioned, however, that faulty exit polls in 2004 projected a win for Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, before President George W. Bush emerged the narrow victor.A victory for the young Illinois senator, who began his bid for the White House nearly two years as an unlikely outsider, would be a landmark in the long struggle for racial equality in America.

When he was born in Hawaii to a black Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas in 1961, many American states banned inter-racial marriages.Four years later, blacks in many Southern states were disenfranchised.McCain aides said they were "stoic" and "realistic", pointing out that Republicans had faced a very tough electoral environment because of President George W. Bush's unpopularity and the ailing economy. The mood inside Mr Obama's camp, in contrast, was one of controlled ebullience.

Mr Obama spent the early evening playing a game of basketball with old friends from Chicago - a now traditional election day activity for him. Later he was expected to settle down to watch election returns at the city's Hyatt Regency hotel before heading to an open-air post-election rally in Grant Park.

As the 21-month-long, billion-dollar-plus election campaign of unprecedented expense and intensity finally drew to a close, Mr McCain appeared wistful as his aides braced themselves for a difficult night."I owe this country more than it will ever owe me," the Arizona senator said at an election day rally in Grand Junction, Colorado.

Mr Obama, 47, the Democratic nominee and overwhelming front runner in opinion polls, and his Republican opponent Mr McCain, 72, who would be the oldest man ever to be first elected to the presidency cast their ballots in their home cities of Chicago and Phoenix respectively.An estimated 153 million voters, some 40 million of whom had voted early across more than 30 states, were eligible to take part in the election.