Democratics took special pride in having delivered a state that eluded both Al Gore and John Kerry, and having done it decisively writes Ruadhán MacCormaic, in Cleveland, Ohio.
For hours they had known. Florida, the source of so much heartache and strife eight years ago. Ohio, predictor par excellence of America's political choices and the state they had worked so hard to make theirs again.
And, just minutes earlier, the seat of the old Confederacy, Virginia, where no Democrat had managed to win in 44 years. By now they had watched each one in turn go blue, greeting successive projection with a cacophonous chorus of cheering and singing and unrestrained joy.
But when it finally came, the clock drawing towards eleven and the crowd heaving with nervous anticipation, the tremulous pandemonium that rose from the Hilton ballroom sounded like it originated somewhere much deeper, more elemental.
As one they leapt and yelled and threw their arms aloft. One elderly man just closed his eyes, brought his hands to his cheeks and turned his face to the ceiling, perfectly still as others forgot themselves and hugged the strangers beside them. Across the ballroom, men and women sobbed freely. The huge screens were all blue now, but nobody was paying heed any more. A young boy on his father's shoulder screamed into his phone: "We won. We won. We won."
The Democratic staff and volunteers of Cleveland took special pride in having delivered a state that eluded both Al Gore and John Kerry, and having done it decisively. Since 1944 Ohio has picked the president in every election but one, when it chose Richard Nixon over John F Kennedy in 1960. This time Barack Obama took the hard-fought battleground state by 51 per cent to John McCain's 47 per cent, and according to exit polls, he won every age group under 60, more women's votes than his opponent, and some 97 per cent of the black vote.
One of those belonged to Phil Davis, a 49-year-old businessman from Cleveland, who had brought his daughter to the party. "I'm glad to be alive at this moment," he said, shaking his head. "It's beyond anything I ever imagined. This is up there with the signing of the Civil Rights Bill in 1964... There's no reason why any individual can't aspire to anything they set their minds to. This is my daughter. She's 7 years old, and I'm just so happy that she will be able to look at any opportunity and say, why not?”
Sisters Jennifer and Rose Carter, in their early thirties, had given months volunteering for the campaign and up until now had been weary after past experience of believing the polls. "I remember working on the campaign in 2004 to get Kerry elected, and my heart was broken, so I was a little bit sceptical. But I'm so excited right now," said Rose. "With early voting, it skewed how many people turned out to vote today. We were kind of depressed by 6 o'clock, 7 o'clock when there were no lines. We were thinking, Oh my God, maybe people aren't voting, maybe we didn't do it. But actually we did exactly what we were supposed to do, which was why people voted early."
"This is extremely important," added Jennifer. "Our parents and our grandparents fought hard for these rights. We didn't have to work for them. But to see our parents and our grandparents' dreams actualised, it's just amazing. I voted on the first day of early voting, and it was very emotional. My grandparents aren't here, but they were part of the reason I was able to vote - they marched, they walked, they lived in Alabama and they were very much part of the movement."
In a reliably Democratic city such as this, Republicans are accustomed to playing the minority role, but at their event across town last night, there could hardly have been a greater contrast. Where the Democrats were raucous, their counterparts were predictably downcast, and even before the earliest states had been declared, party members had begun to warn of how Obama would govern.
Back at the Hilton, it was the turn at the microphone of Subodh Chandra, a delegate to the Democratic convention and a prominent fund-raiser for Obama. "I have three four-and-a-half year old boys who live their lives blissfully unaware that their lives are filled with anything other than possibility," he told the hushed crowd. "They're third generation Americans of colour. They will not know of a time when what happened tonight was a big deal, and that's good. And when I whisper in their ears as they sleep tonight that you can be anything you want to be in this country, I will be speaking the truth to them."