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12:45 a.m. ET Barack Obama has long coat-tails. His victory in the presidential race is just part of the revival of Democratic fortunes across the United States that has redrawn the electoral map.

The votes are still being counted but it looks as if Mr. Obama picked up at least seven states for the Democrats — Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio, Iowa, Virginia and Florida. Some of these states had voted Republican for a generation or two. It's possible that before the night is over, he will be able to add Montana, Indiana and North Carolina to that list.

The Democratic surge in the Congress mocks the prediction by Karl Rove, George W. Bush's strategist, that he had achieved a "permanent Republican majority."

The Democrats collected several high-profile Senate seats in Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, North Carolina and New Hampshire. At this point, they are holding 56 seats in the 100-seat chamber, compared with 40 for the Republicans. Four seats have yet to be decided but most analysts are saying it's unlikely that the Democrats will sweep them. The 60-seat level is magic because it allows a party to break an opposition fillibuster.

The Democrats also strengthened their hold on the House of Representatives. Right now, they're holding 237 seats, compared to 151 for the Republicans. Another 47 contests have yet to be decided.

12:10 a.m. ET Barack Obama has just taken the stage with his wife and two daughters. The chants of "Yes, we can" are in his ears as he greets the tens of thousands standing before him like a rock star: "Hello, Chicago."

The 47-year-old president president-elect strikes the same themes as he did in the 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention that propelled him to the national stage. "If there is anyone out there who doubts that America is a place where all things are possible ... tonight is the answer," he says behind panels of bulletproof glass.

"It's been a long time coming but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change is coming to America," he promises about 65,000 people in lakefront Grant Park.

11:50 p.m. ET Barack Obama has not yet given his victory speech but hundreds of young people in Washington, D.C., have left their television sets to celebrate. CBC Newsworld is showing pictures of hundreds of young people crowding into Lafayette Park, across from the White House. They are waving Obama signs and dancing deliriously. Many of them are holding aloft cell phones, indicating that word of the event is being spread by text messages -- exactly the technique that Mr. Obama exploited so successfully in his campaign.

11:30 p.m. ET The palm trees are swaying gracefully in the warm evening breeze in the courtyard of the Biltmore hotel in Phoenix. John McCain, dropping that angry pose he adopted in the last weeks of the campaign, has conceded the election gracefully. "The American people have spoken and they have spoken clearly," he said as he shared a stage with his wife, Cindy, and his vice-presidential candidate , Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd. There was no sign of Joe the Plumber.

Mr. McCain called Barack Obama "a good man" and pledged to work with him when he returns to the U.S. Senate. And he acknowledged the historic nature of an evening on which the United States elected its first black president. "Senator Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and his country," Mr. McCain said.

Not everyone in his audience was as graceful. Twice, the Republican candidate objected when some people booed at the mention of Mr. Obama's name.

Mr. McCain wasn't the only person to offer the victor congratulations. Outgoing president George W. Bush offered his congratulations for "an awesome night," according to a White House spokesman.

11:15 p.m. ET Forty years ago, when protesters clashed with Chicago police in Grant Park, the chant was "the whole world is watching." Well, it's watching those lovely lakefront acres once again and this time with much more of a sense of hope than during the 1968 Democratic national convention.

The immediate comment posted on web sites and news wires was that the United States has turned a page in electing its first black president.

Jesse Jackson, a veteran of the civil rights movement, called the night's events "a peaceful revolution" and television broadcasts showed him with tears streaming down his cheeks.

11 :05 p.m. ET A few minutes ago, the television networks gave Virginia to Barack Obama, saying that it hadn't gone Democratic since Lyndon Johnson won it in 1964. Then, at the stroke of the hour, with polls in California closing, Mr. Obama was declared the victor. The long campaign of nearly two years that consumed tens of millions of dollars, is finally over. The huge crowd in Chicago's Grant Park is ecstatic and all the television commentators seems shaken by the historic occasion of the United States electing its first black president.

10 :55 p.m. ET Never mind the giddiness sweeping Chicago. Consider what's happening in Kenya where this is cautious joy that the man they consider one of their own will be the next U.S. president.

Many Kenyans — and other Africans — stayed up all night or woke before dawn on Wednesday morning to follow the election. In a Nairobi shantytown, hundreds gathered around a massive bonfire of burning tires, holding up Obama posters and waving U.S. flags.

Mr. Obama, the son of an economist from Kenya, is wildly popular across Africa. His pictures adorns billboards and minibuses and one Nairobi newspaper ran a 16-page "Obama Magic Souvenir Pullout" to commemorate the election.

Many Africans are hoping that as president he will be able to help the continent, presumably after he nurses the U.S. economy back to health.

10: 32 p.m. ET There's a certain caution about making predictions, what with the Dewey Beats Truman headlines in 1948 and the Albert Gore victory call by some television networks in 2000. In Phoenix, John McCain's advisers are admitting that they see "no path to victory" even though Americans on the West Coast are still voting but few are willing to run with this to the bank. Thus, Politico.com is saying only that "Obama Takes Commanding Lead" while the Fox News web site is admitting only that the Democratic victories in Ohio and Pennsylvania are "damaging blows to McCain hopes for an upset." The Huffington Post web site isn't so shy, however. Its main page is crowing about "president-elect Obama."

10 :25 p.m. ET This is like one of those discussions that proponents of proportional representation start in Canada when a political party wins with less than a majority of votes, which is to say after almost every election. "Make every vote count," they argue in proposing systems where minority parties are represented in legislatures and the House of Commons even though they couldn't win a plurality in any local contest.

Consider how it looks in the United States right now. The television networks say that Barack Obama has piled up 207 electoral votes with 50 per cent of the vote while John McCain has won just 95 electoral votes with 49 per cent of the votes cast. With 34 per cent of national votes counted — some 51-million — the gap between the two candidates is fewer than a million votes. Sounds like Fair Vote Canada could find some work south of the border.

10 :15 p.m. ET It's already well into tomorrow in Hong Kong so it makes sense that they're already talking about a government lead by Barack Obama. Christopher Patten, who oversaw the handover of the former British territory to China in 1997, is there and he's expressing his reservations about the protectionist trade rhetoric that the Democratic candidate used in the campaign. "I hope that it is only an election bluster because it would be very dangerous if the new American administration was to conclude that the correct answer to the financial crash ... was to go back to protectionism," he said.

It's a concern that Canadian officials would certainly echo. Tomorrow.

9 :50 p.m. ET On CNN, John King is signalling that it's over. He's punching up states on that electronic map of his, turning them red and blue and he's pretty well persuaded himself that Barack Obama is going to win. He's put a whole bunch of states in John McCain's win column and still he can only get him within four votes of the Electoral College tally he needs to win. Even on the right-leaning Fox News, there is chatter about an Obama victory although the talking heads are saying that he got lucky because the economy melted down while George W. Bush was in the White House.

That's like saying Stephen Harper got lucky because he ran against Stéphane Dion. Yes, he did, but no one made the Liberals choose such an ineffective leader and no one made Mr. Bush mismanage the economy.

9:35 p.m. ET There's a truism in U.S. politics that a Republican can't take the White House without taking Ohio. Well, Ohio and its 20 electoral votes just went to Barack Obama. They're going crazy in Grant Park in Chicago. At the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, where John McCain's supporters are gathering, they're listening to singer Hank Williams Jr. and not watching the television news.

9: 15 p.m. ET George W. Bush is watching the election results on television like everyone else although there are likely not many people who will be feeling as defensive about the results. He had a dinner with a few friends and senior staff in the White House and presented his wife, Laura, with earrings to celebrate her birthday today.

Mr. Bush, whose approval rating is at the historically low level of just 26 per cent, thanked his guests for their friendship and their work. He ended the dinner with this toast: "May God bless whoever wins tonight."

Said his spokesperson, Dana Perino: "The President believes tonight is a night to appreciate the strength of our country and our democracy." Of course, she also said that Mr. Bush believes the election "is not about him" so you might take this all with a grain of salt.

9:0 0 p.m. ET It all seems to be unfolding the way everyone predicted. With Eastern and Midwestern polls closed and counting under way, Barack Obama is leading John McCain by four percentage points and is running away with the Electoral College race with 78 votes to his opponent's 34. In Canada, at this point, the CBC would project a winner and everyone would head to the bar but it's going to be a long, long night. California polls don't close for another two hours and, in Alaska, they might finish voting by next week sometime.

8:4 5 p.m. ET Perhaps God doesn't like being dragged into politics. Elizabeth Dole seems to have gone down in her attempt to win a second term in the U.S. Senate from North Carolina. The reaction against one of her campaign ads, which insinuated that her Democratic opponent, state senator Kay Hagan, somehow doesn't believe in God is complete with early results showing the Republican incumbent trailing by nearly 20 percentage points.

Ms. Dole's problem was that Ms. Hagan, a little-known state senator, is an Presbyterian church elder who teaches Sunday school and her attack didn't wash. Sensing she was in trouble, Ms. Dole told a meeting in Charlotte on the eve of the election that she hadn't intended to challenge Ms. Hagan's faith. She said she simply wanted to ask why Ms. Hagan had gone to a fundraiser in Boston at the home of a man associated with Godless Americans PAC, a group that opposes references to God in government. "The question is not, 'Does she go to church?' The question is "Why did you go to Boston'?" Ms. Dole said.

Actually, the real question is what will Ms. Dole do after her defeat.

8:05 p.m . ET Hours before the polls closed, thousands of people were pouring in to Chicago's Grant Park for Barack Obama's election-night party. About 65,000 people received tickets to attend the party an dup to a million more were expected to throng the streets around the lakeside park.

In Phoenix, meanwhile, there was a subdued air as guests arrived for John McCain's election-night event at the posh Biltmore hotel. Some of the early arrivals said they were concerned the night might not yield a victory for the Republican candidate but they were hopeful.

"There's still time for a little divine intervention," said Dennis Glaser.

The cheering mob in Chicago drowned out a CNN reporter attempting to do a standup. Her counterpart at the Biltmore had no trouble being heard over the Phoenix Boys Choir as it serenaded the Republican faithful.

7:45 p.m. ET Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Give me Tim Robbins.

All the 50-year-old actor wanted to do was vote but he had to get a court order to do so. His troubles began when he showed up at the same Manhattan polling station at which he had voted in previous presidential elections. They didn't have his name, even though he has been registered to vote in New York since 1988 and an official said his name had been taken off the voter rolls. He turned down the offer of casting a paper or affidavit ballot because he thought it could get lost or thrown away, which must come as a news flash to Elections Canada.

After a lengthy standoff, he went and got a court order from a judge allowing him to cast his ballot in a fancy way. "This is just one example of how difficult it is to vote in the United States," he said.

7 7:22 p.m. ET Everyone is Irish on March 17 and some people are Irish on Nov. 4, too. In Moneygall, a town of 250 people in central Ireland, half the town has packed the local pub to cheer on Barack Obama. The locals claim him as one of their own, saying that his ancestor Fulmuth Kearney emigrated from the area in 1850. The Democratic candidate's heritage has even been celebrated in song.

7:05 p.m. ET The cheese-eating surrender monkeys are close to getting their revenge. The bars and clubs in Paris were filled today with people cheering on Barack Obama and perhaps cheering on the demise of a Republican Party that castigated the French for not supporting the Iraq war. Cheers of "Oui, nous pouvons" rang through the capital.

Many of the most avid U.S. watchers were blacks who cheered on the first African-American to have the White House within grasp. In one club, Herve Moussakanda, who was born to Congolese parents, loaded up his plate with cheese (what else?) and said: "I couldn't miss this, this is historic, a dream come true."

6 :52 p.m. ET Clearly, they didn't get the memo in Kentucky. The first results have trickled out and they show Barack Obama edging John McCain in Indiana by 51 per cent to 48 per cent. In Kentucky, however, the Republican candidate is laying a beating on his Democratic opponent, surging out to an early lead of 69 per cent to 30 per cent.

6:4 0 p.m. ET Early indications that John McCain may be in more trouble than even the pre-election polls showed. Interviews with voters today showed that one in 10 were casting a ballot this year for the first time and that the group was disproportionately young and non-white — a demographic that has lined up behind Barack Obama. A quarter of the new voters said they don't have land line telephones at home, only cell phones, which means the pollsters likely didn't get to them.

6:30 p.m. ET The United States is arguably the world's greatest democracy but that doesn't mean that it's always ready for, um, democracy.

Americans are clearly enthralled by the contest between Barack Obama and John McCain and showed it today by turning out at polling stations in record numbers. Early turnout, combined with the record number of voters who cast their ballots in advance polls, prompted forecasts that voter turnout would approach 80 per cent of registered voters.

Not every state could handle the crush. As a result, lines stretched around buildings and down streets as people waited hours to cast a ballot. In New York City, for example, voters started lining up before dawn. There were long queues in Virginia and in Missouri, both closely contested states. As often as not, all the fancy electronic voting machines that some states use rather than plain old paper and pencil simply broke down. In some places the waits lasted more than four hours. CNN said it received 25,000 calls today complaining about problems in voter registration, mechanical problems or long wait times.

Norma Storms, a 78-year-old resident of Raytown, Mo., said her driveway was filled with cars left by voters who couldn't get into nearby parking lots. "I have never seen anything like this in all my born days," she said.

Never seen anything like it in Canada, either. Can you imagine anyone standing in line for four hours to vote for Stephen Harper, Jack Layton or Stéphane Dion?