COMPILED FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

Barack Obama won the presidency Tuesday, the first African-American to claim the highest office in the land, an improbable candidate fulfilling a once-impossible dream by attracting an unprecedented voter coalition.

Obama won crucial swing states from the Rust Belt to the Mountain West. After TV media networks projected an Obama win at approximately 11 p.m. Tuesday night, Republican John McCain conceded shortly after polls closed on the West Coast as Black Americans rejoiced around the nation.

From the cafes of Beirut, Lebanon, to the villages of Kenya and on to the streets of Asian metropolises, much of the world looked on with vivid hope Wednesday at Obama’s electoral triumph.

Some saw the rise of a Black American to the U.S. presidency as a transformative event that may repair the battered reputation of the United States, lift the aspirations of non-Whites worldwide, and renew chances for diplomacy rather than war.

Record turnout
Americans voted in record numbers, standing in lines that snaked around blocks and in some places in pouring rain. Voters who lined up on Tuesday and the millions who cast early ballots propelled what one expert said was the highest turnout in a century.

Michael McDonald of George Mason University estimates a 64.1 percent turnout rate, the highest turnout rate since 1908. Stephen Ansolabehere, a political science professor at Harvard and MIT, determined via exit polling data that Whites made up 74 percent of the 2008 electorate. That’s down considerably from 81 percent in 2000 because of increase in Black and Hispanic voting, he said.

New voters, Blacks, youth
About seven in 10 first-time voters voted for Obama. Two-thirds of new voters were under age 30, one in five were Black and nearly as many were Hispanic.

The swell in youthful voters was largely due to the excitement about a new role model, the possibility of making history, and Obama’s stand on the issues, said Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition for Black Civic Participation.

“The issues of the day such as Katrina and what happened on the Gulf Coast had an impact in 2006. We were upset and angry, but we also understood politically that we had to weigh in on the process,” Campbell said.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies determined last year that the top issues for African-Americans were the war, health care and the economy, including jobs. For youth, the issues were lowering tuition rates and increasing educational Pell grants and the prospects of higher-paying jobs when they graduate.

Gained ground among White voters
McCain had a 10-percentage-point edge with White voters, less than George W. Bush’s advantage of 17 percentage points with that group in 2004.

Nearly six in 10 White men and nearly as many White wo

men backed the Republican. McCain got about two-thirds of White votes in the South.

Among Whites in the rest of the country, it was a tie. Whites who haven’t finished college leaned strongly toward McCain, approaching the 23-point margin by which Bush won them in 2004.

Approximately 95 percent of all Black Americans and about 67 percent of Hispanics supported Obama.

Black Floridians vote early
Florida turnout statewide averaged 71.5 percent. A preliminary, unscientific review of statewide voting patterns seems to indicate that Black Floridians voted early in disproportionate numbers, but that Black turnout may have been lower than the state average.

Still, voting participation in predominately Black precincts showed a massive increase from the sparse turnout for the Aug. 26 statewide primary election.

As an example, at predominately Black polling places like Miami-Dade’s Haitian Evangelical Baptist Church, only 8.2 percent of registered voters showed up in August; 62.2 percent voted on Tuesday.

Jacksonville’s St. Thomas Missionary Baptist Church’s precinct increased to 67.6 percent, up from 9.9 percent in August. Tampa’s Allen Temple AME Church increased to 33.2 percent, up from 8.1 percent; Fort Lauderdale’s Melrose Park increased to 59 percent, up from 3.2 percent. Those figures don’t include early voters who cast their votes at other locations.

Worldwide cultural impact
Obama alters the international image of the United States by virtue of his skin color and life story. At a time when America is challenged abroad by Islamic fundamentalism and an international backlash against the Bush administration’s often-unilateral foreign policy and prisoner abuse scandals, the new president will also have personal ties to the developing world.

He has family members in Africa, a middle name “Hussein” from the Arab world and early childhood experience in Asia, where he lived with his mother and his Indonesian stepfather.

It may also close a chapter in America’s culture wars. Obama is the first president to come of age after the Vietnam era, following two baby boomer presidents whose political identities were shaped in large part by their opposite responses to the bitter turmoil of the 1960s.

‘First step’
Obama’s win culminates an American history that expands from Black slavery to Jim Crow to a modern day civil rights movement still marked by institutional racism.

“America is in the process and has taken the first step of turning from darkness unto light, turning from war unto peace, turning from exploitation of the poor by the powerful to equal opportunity and economic justice,” said civil rights icon the Rev. Joseph Lowery in an interview. “It’s a great moment for America.”

Press reports indicate that Obama asked Congressman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois to become his chief of staff. A transition leadership team was appointed and formally organized as the Obama-Biden Transition Project, overseen by three co-chairs. For more information on the transition, go to www.change.gov.

Mike Dorning and Jim Tankersley/Chicago Tribune/ MCT, Hazel Trice Edney/NNPA, and the Associated Press contributed to this report.