Obama stakes his claim to history

Barring a miracle, Democrat Barack Obama looked certain to take the White House and the mantle of the 44th President of the United States.

A record 140 million Americans were expected to vote, with 30 million having already cast their ballots in one of the country’s most electrifying elections.

Front runner Mr Obama, who appeared to wipe tears from his cheeks on the campaign trail following the death of his grandmother, joined early voters in his home city of Chicago.

His Republican rival John McCain joined his wife Cindy to vote in his home state of Arizona.

After one of the longest and most expensive presidential elections in history, the nation will elect either its first black president or its first female vice-president, Republican Sarah Palin.

Both candidates were planning last-minute campaign stops to try to woo any undecided voters after a campaign that is estimated to have cost £1.5billion and lasted almost two years.

“I voted,” Mr Obama said, holding up the validation slip after turning in his ballot in his Chicago neighbourhood’s precinct of Hyde Park.

The 47-year-old Illinois senator was accompanied by his wife Michelle and their two daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, seven.

He was to end his campaign last night at a rally in Chicago where an estimated million people were expected.

In his final rally in Virginia, which has not voted for a Democratic presidential nominee in 44 years, he told almost 100,000 people: “I’m feeling kind of fired up. I’m feeling like I’m ready to go.

“At this defining moment in history, Virginia, you can give this country the change it needs.”

His campaign manager David Plouffe said he was confident that new voters and young voters would fuel an enormous turnout to benefit Mr Obama.

“We just want to make sure people turn out,” Mr Plouffe told NBC’s Today show. “We think we have enough votes around the country.”

Mr Obama led by almost eight points in the latest average of national polls but Mr McCain remained hopeful of a surprise victory.

He said: “I think these battleground states have now closed up, almost all of them, and I believe there’s a good scenario where we can win.

“I know I’m still the underdog. I understand that. You can’t imagine the excitement of an individual to be this close to the most important position in the world, and I’ll enjoy it. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”

Americans will decide between Mr Obama, an inexperienced senator with a powerful message of change and hope, and former Vietnam prisoner of war Mr McCain, who at 72 would be the oldest first-term president with 26 years of experience in the US Congress.

It is “one of the most important elections in the history of the country and the history of the world”, said Professor Allan Lichtman of the American University in Washington. The next president will have to face “perhaps the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression”, two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and “one of the gravest challenges in the history of mankind – catastrophic climate change”.

Professor Lichtman added that Mr Obama was “the most significant breakthrough candidate in all American history”.

“He could do for race in America what John F Kennedy did for religion in America,” he said.

“Kennedy governed as a president of all America, proving that a Catholic would not be a Catholic president, but a true American president.

“Ever since then the issue of Catholicism has been non-existent. If Obama wins and Obama governs as the president of all Americans, as I’m confident he will, he can do to the issue of race the same kind of transformations that John F Kennedy achieved for the issue of Catholicism in 1960.”

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the campaign had been “historic”, but stuck with convention by refusing to say whom he wanted to win.

“That is for the American people to decide and we will have the result very soon,” he said during his tour of the Gulf.

“The American leadership is going to be very important in the next critical time and I look forward to working with the next president, whoever he is.

“I think whatever the result, history has been made in this campaign – the women coming to the fore, a black candidate coming to the fore. But it is for the American people to decide.”

Mr Obama, who was only elected to the Senate in January 2005, has looked increasingly presidential in recent weeks. When Wall Street and the rest of the world was thrown into financial panic, he remained calm.

While John McCain suspended his campaign and said he was rushing to Washington to save the economy, he said and did very little when he got there.

It was the moment many pundits believe altered the course of the campaign and swung the election in Mr Obama’s favour.