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NBC News at 10:58 p.m. declared Democrat Sen. Barack Obama the nation's first black president-elect.
Polite, the venerable 85-year-old civil rights leader and Lancaster City Councilman, pumped his fists as images of ecstatic crowds in Harlem and at Spelman College in Atlanta were broadcast on the screen.
"It's a great load off," Polite said quietly as the crowd of Democrats at Michael's Motor Cars in Lancaster city erupted in cheers. "The hard work we put in over the years paid off. We changed people's minds and hearts."
Obama, with the help of Pennsylvania's 21 electoral votes, defeated Republican Sen. John McCain on Tuesday. Across Lancaster County, Obama seized 44 percent of the vote, the best a Democrat has done in 44 years.
Lancaster County voters chose McCain by a much smaller margin than they've given to a GOP presidential nominee in the last four decades. The unofficial results were:
John McCain ........ 123,777
Barack Obama ........ 96,981
Ralph Nader .......... 1,194
Bob Barr ............... 740
Click here for complete county election results
Elsewhere, U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts and state Rep. Dave Hickernell won re-election, and Lloyd Smucker was chosen to succeed retiring state Sen. Gibson Armstrong in the state's 13th District.
Lancaster voters rejected the home-rule charter, which would have changed Lancaster County's form of government, and in Eastern Lancaster School District, voters chose to accept gambling revenue from the state.
(1198) (997) (698) (560) (471) (463) (423) (343) (267) (263) (250) (223) (203) (183) (174) (155) (154) (110) (101) (96) (88) (79) (74) (73) (56) (40) (39) (34) (23) (21) (9) (8) (4) (3)Local Democrats said they hope Tuesday's performance in Lancaster by Obama is the start of a more successful chapter for the party.
"The party has to continue on a moderate base, and that was the appeal of Barack Obama," Rick Gray, the Democratic mayor of Lancaster city, said. "And we have to continue to run positive campaigns. I don't think the residents of Lancaster want anymore negative campaigns."
Dave Dumeyer, chairman of the Lancaster GOP, credited local Democrats and the Obama campaign for registering tens of thousands of new voters in Lancaster this year.
But he pointed out that in Lancaster County, GOP candidates for state office and Congress beat their Democratic opponents, and the Republicans defeated home rule.
"I wouldn't count us out yet," Dumeyer said. "All in all, the committee came through."
Statewide, Obama won more than 3 million votes to McCain's 2.5 million.
Pundits said McCain would need to dominate Pennsylvania's conservative regions between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia to overcome Obama's advantages in the Philadelphia region, but in Lancaster he fell well short of President Bush's 2-to-1 edge in 2004. The last Democrat to do as well as Obama in Lancaster was Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, when the incumbent took the county with 50 percent of the vote.
The economy was the dominant issue for Pennsylvanians. G. Terry Madonna, director of Franklin & Marshall College's Center for Politics & Public Affairs, said exit polls showed Obama, by a 2-to-1 margin, won the support of voters who thought the economy was the most pressing concern.
"Obama was able to convince voters that McCain was a third Bush term," Madonna said. "These voters just couldn't vote for someone who would continue Bush's economic policies.
"Ultimately, that's what doomed him."
W. Wesley McDonald, conservative author and professor at Elizabethtown College, said the Wall Street meltdown undermined McCain's campaign in Pennsylvania.
"If it was a normal year, McCain would have had a real shot," McDonald said. "With the economic crisis, that was a real godsend for the Obama campaign."
Polls showed McCain and Obama neck and neck statewide until the stock market tumbled. Afterward, Obama surged in voter surveys to double-digit leads for most of October.
While the economy dominated the minds of voters statewide, locally, Obama supporters said they picked the Illinois senator because they were dissatisfied with the Bush administration.
"He'd do a better job than Bush has been doing," 48-year-old Ernest Dickerson of Lancaster city said.
Dickerson and Arthur Lee, 70, also of Lancaster city, said they hope Obama can end the war in Iraq.
"I don't know if he'll stop the war," Lee said. "He's gonna try, but it may be too far gone."
Others cited the GOP's attacks on Obama's character and McCain's switch of position — he initially opposed but later supported the Bush tax cuts — as reasons to vote for Obama.
"I liked McCain a few years ago," 54-year-old Memo Raineri of Manheim Township said. "I wish he would have won in 2000.
"But we need a major change right now. The country is not heading in the right direction financially, and we put enough time in that war (Iraq)."
McCain supporters throughout the county cited the Arizona senator's pro-life position, his military background and his legislative experiences as reasons to support him.
"I like the fact he's willing to cross the aisle, and I think Barack Obama doesn't have enough experience," said 42-year-old Mike Hurst of Manheim Township. Hurst, however, said the negative ads from the McCain-Palin camp ultimately hurt, not helped, the Republican ticket.
"That was disruptive to the campaign," Hurst said. "That didn't help John McCain at all."
Across the county, a spattering of problems — from long lines at the polls to voting machines breaking down — hampered some voters. Overall, however, county elections officials said the day was successful and the problems not nearly as troublesome as those reported in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
"I'm concerned anytime you have a problem, but I don't think the issues will … affect the integrity of the vote," Terry Kauffman, chairman of the county election commission, said.
E-mail: dpidgeon@lnpnews.com
