Nov. 5, 2008: The Morning After Barack Obama Was Elected the 44th President of the United States

On the morning of Nov. 5, 2008, the United States woke to a new political reality. The night before, Barack Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, had won the presidency over Arizona Senator John McCain, becoming the first Black president-elect in the nation's history. The result had been called by the networks shortly after the West Coast polls closed at 11 p.m. Eastern.

The Long Night

Obama's victory came after a campaign that began in Springfield, Illinois, in February 2007 and outlasted a bruising Democratic primary against Hillary Clinton. By the end, he had carried states that Democrats had struggled to win for years, including Virginia, Indiana and North Carolina, and he won Ohio and Florida. He finished with 365 electoral votes to McCain's 173, well past the 270 needed. The popular vote ran roughly 53 percent to 46 percent. Turnout was among the highest in decades, and the contest unfolded against a financial crisis that had dominated the final weeks of the race. McCain conceded in Phoenix, telling supporters that Americans had spoken and acknowledging the significance of the result for the country's history of race. The man who had been a little-known state legislator little more than a decade earlier now held the most powerful elected office in the world, a rise that few election forecasters would have predicted at the start.

Obama delivered his victory speech before a vast crowd in Chicago's Grant Park, a city park that had also been a stage for turbulent protests during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. He opened by saying that if anyone still doubted that America is a place where all things are possible, tonight was their answer. He also cautioned that the road ahead would be long, and that the climb would be steep. Crowds gathered in cities across the country and abroad, and newspapers printed extra editions the next morning that sold out quickly in many places. Obama was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2009, inheriting a recession and two wars. The celebration, in other words, lasted about as long as the night itself, and the work began almost at once.