The crowds for Barack Obama’s election night party in Chicago were only just beginning to gather last night when a canary in the Republican mineshaft toppled to the ground.

Vigo County in Indiana has correctly predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1960. Home to the city of Terre Haute, this bellwether is heavily white and working class but, at 8pm with 90 per cent of precincts reporting, Mr Obama was shown leading John McCain by fully 14 points.

Within minutes of these results being reported, television networks were projecting a victory for Mr Obama in Pennsylvania, a state Mr McCain had repeatedly stated he must wrest from the Democrats if he was to win the White House.

Next came New Mexico, the first of a dozen states that voted for President Bush and were being targeted by Mr Obama. At 9pm this was projected as the first of many victories.

Then, at 9.20pm, the networks began calling Ohio — without which no Republican has ever won the presidency — for Mr Obama. It looked all over, bar the shouting that swiftly erupted at Grant Park in Chicago.

A picture was beginning to emerge from early returns across many of the traditionally Republican rural strongholds in battleground states. In Pennsylvania — where Mr Obama lost badly to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary — 81 per cent of her supporters backed him this time including two thirds of white, working-class voters.

This was an election where lingering anxieties about electing a black president with an exotic background appeared to have been trumped by bigger fears to do with the economy.

In North Carolina exit polls showed a quarter of voters said race had been a factor in their decision. But 30 per cent of this group backed Mr Obama nonetheless.

Voters in Virginia had queued for up to six hours to cast their ballots yesterday. And, while exit polls showed Mr McCain winning nearly 60 per cent of white votes, that was eight points lower than the margin achieved by Mr Bush in 2004. Mr Obama was winning narrowly in Northampton, Westmoreland and Carolina counties. Results from Florida, that other traditional swing state, showed that Mr Obama had flipped the Hispanic vote completely from 2004, taking 55 per cent and leading in clutch of counties that backed Mr Bush.

The day had begun for Mr Obama with a visit to Beulah Shoesmith Elementary School in the South Side of Chicago to vote. He narrowly avoiding a pair of embarrassing neighbours. Bill Ayers, a radical bomber turned university lecturer — whose past association with the Democrat has flickered across the campaign — left the polling station shortly before him. So did Louis Farrakhan, the controversial leader of Nation of Islam.

As he filled in his ballot, Mr Obama’s elder daughter yawned, the younger clutched his left leg shyly. After all, what could be more tiresome for Malia, 10, and Natasha, 7, than having to watch their dad vote for himself as president?

The candidate grinned benignly at his children, later describing how he was looking forward to taking them to school this morning or at least cook them breakfast.

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