As predicted, network analysts last night painted Pennsylvania blue as Illinois Sen. Barack Obama overwhelmingly won the state, 55 to 45 percent.
Pennsylvania was the first major step on the way to victory for Obama. This was reflected in the emphasis put on the announcement that he had won less than an hour after polls closed at 8:00 p.m.
In the final weeks of the race Arizona Sen. John McCain had poured money into and visited the state several times along with his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. His campaign hoped to sway conservative Democrats and moderates.
Still, their efforts weren't enough to overcome polls that had been trending toward Obama for the better part of the two weeks leading up to the election. Obama also benefited from a larger pocketbook and extensive ground organization.
The Illinois senator clinched victory in part by posting decisive leads in the Philadelphia suburbs, with margins approaching 60 percent to McCain's about 43 percent.
Three of those suburban counties - Montgomery, Bucks and Delaware - went for Kerry in 2004, albeit with narrower margins. Chester County, the fourth Philadelphia suburb, voted for President George Bush.
Kerry won the state 50.9 percent to 48.42 percent in that election.
This year, the margins and number of voters in these four counties helped propel Obama to victory statewide.
Political Science professor Richard Johnston called suburban Philadelphia voters the new swing voters, adding that McCain's choice of Palin as a running mate to appeal to social conservatives could have been "a fatal error" that alienated moderates.
Obama also made inroads among rural voters, capturing many of those who had voted for Sen. Hillary Clinton during the primary. Those voters included people from "steel country," the eastern strip of the state running from Scranton down through Allentown and Reading, which voted for Bush in 2004.
McCain "needed to capture as many Hillary supporters as possible," Johnston said.
In the waning days of the campaign, McCain and Palin criss-crossed the state, hoping to catch some of these voters - whom Obama once referred to as "bitter" and "clinging to their guns and religion" - but were ultimately unable to overcome the groundswell of support for the president-elect.
And while differences among age groups were unavailable in Pennsylvania, exit polls show that Obama likely benefited from the youth vote in the state and beyond. On Penn's campus and across the city, students waited patiently as lines stretched indefinitely.
CNN reported that at Lincoln University, a historically black university in Upper Darby, people stood in lines for over 11 hours.
Obama also benefitted from concerns about McCain's age, an issue voters cited twice as frequently as race when asked in exit polls about important factors in their decision.
