BREAKING NEWS msnbc.com and NBC News
updated 5:03 p.m. PT, Tues., Nov. 4, 2008 Democratic Sen. Barack Obama <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16438329/> opened a big lead in the Electoral College in the presidential election Tuesday night as NBC News projected that he had won Pennsylvania, which both parties had targeted as critical to winning the race, along with several other large Eastern and Midwestern states. NBC projected that Obama had also won Massachusetts, New Jersey and his home state of Illinois, three states with hefty electoral vote hauls. He also won Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire and Vermont, the network's political unit projected. Obama was also leading in Ohio, another major prize, although NBC News said the results were still too early to call definitively. Republican Sen. John McCain <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16438320/> won Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee, while he was leading in Alabama, Mississippi and West Virginia in races that were too early or too close to project. Among other major battleground states, Florida and Indiana were too close to call, while Missouri was too early to call, NBC said. The polls had also closed in Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina, where it was too close or too early to make definitive projections. Results were expected to be delayed across the country as record numbers of voters flocked to polling stations, energized by an election in which they would select either the nation's first black president or its first female vice president. Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, led in nearly all public opinion polls over McCain, a veteran senator from Arizona. Both campaigns launched get-out-the-vote efforts that led to long lines at polling stations in a contest that Democrats were also hoping would help them expand their majorities in both houses of Congress. Americans were voting in numbers unprecedented since women were given the franchise in 1920. Secretaries of state predicted turnouts approaching 90 percent in Virginia and Colorado and 80 percent or more in big states like Ohio, California, Texas, Missouri and Maryland. At Bethany Lutheran Church in Tacoma, Wash., the line was so long that poll workers shut things down for about 10 minutes to regroup, handing out numbers for voters to wait until they were called. "I have a heart condition, and I can't stand in that line," said Charles Moore, who said he had been waiting for several hours. "And the line just keeps going and going." At New Shiloh Church Ministries on Mastin Lake in Huntsville, Ala., Stephanie Lacy-Conerly brought along a chair, expecting to stay for hours. "It's exciting," she said. "It's an historical moment."
