Obama's Victory Margin Grows

  ABC World News reported, "The national vote as more of it is counted the margin of victory for Barack Obama is actually growing. He now has a seven percentage point win over John McCain. We are now able to say that Barack Obama for certain has carried the states of North Carolina and Indiana" bringing his electoral vote total to 364, while counting continues in Missouri, where Sen. John McCain has a slight lead. The AP[ ] says Obama's win in North Carolina "was the first for a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter won the state in 1976. Of Bush's 2004 states, Obama captured Virginia, Florida and North Carolina in the South, Ohio, Indiana and Iowa in the Midwest and Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico in the West." The Washington Post's Harold Meyerson writes, "Even though Obama's victory was nowhere near as numerically lopsided as Franklin Roosevelt's in 1932, his margins among decisive and growing constituencies make clear that this was a genuinely realigning election."
      Obama Made Gains Across Nearly Every Voting Bloc   On NBC Nightly News, analyst Chuck Todd said Obama's victory "was across the board. His increases was not just about one voting group. It was across the board, whether it was older voters, younger voter, black voters, white voters, Latino voters, wherever they live. ... If we eliminated every voter under the age of 30, only two states would flip to McCain, Indiana and North Carolina." On the CBS Evening News, Jeff Greenfield also noted that when you "look at where Barack Obama improved over John Kerry...you will see that except for a few states, Kentucky and Arkansas and a few others, he did better than Kerry almost everywhere, and that portends potential long-term trouble for the Republicans."
      Obama Won 67% Of The Hispanic Vote   USA Today reports, "Hispanic voters surged this week and swung their support to the Democratic Party, helping flip four states to winner Barack Obama in a trend that poses challenges for Republicans in future elections." Obama "won 67% of the Hispanic vote - 23 percentage points higher than President Bush's showing in 2004." The New York Times adds that "the number of Latinos who went to the polls increased by nearly 25 percent over 2004, with sharp rises among naturalized immigrants and young, first-time voters, according to a study by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials."
      Obama Gains Among White Evangelicals   The New York Times says Obama "succeeded in chiseling off small but significant chunks of white evangelical voters," doubling "his support among young white evangelicals (those ages 18 to 29) compared with" 2004 Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry. The Times notes, "The increase was almost the same for white evangelicals ages 30 to 44." Overall, "most white evangelicals remained in the Republican camp," as Sen. John McCain "held 74 percent of the white evangelical vote, compared with 24 percent for Mr. Obama - a gain of only three percentage points over Mr. Kerry. But in most of the swing states where Mr. Obama's campaign concentrated, like Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia, his gains over Mr. Kerry in 2004 among white evangelicals were larger."