US Election: Obama's Win in Pennsylvania a Crushing Defeat for Mccain

John McCain, fighting to keep alive his presidential ambitions, had staked all his hopes on winning Pennsylvania. Instead, his defeat there last night sealed his fate, denying the Republican a path to the White House.

In the battle for the White House, Pennsylvania, with its 21 electoral college votes, was one of the three big prizes along with Florida and Ohio - and McCain had famously called it his last stand.

With Pennsylvania off the table, McCain's only hope of victory was to try to hold off a surge by Barack Obama and hang on to every state won by George Bush in 2004.

But as the night wore on, it became clear those hopes would not materialize, and the Republican faced additional heartache.

New Hampshire, the most McCain-friendly state in his two attempts at winning the White House, also went for Obama.

McCain won New Hampshire in the 2000 Republican primary against George Bush - only to see his hopes extinguished in the south. In the summer of 2007, New Hampshire was also the scene of McCain's improbable comeback in the Republican primary.

With its fierce tradition of independent voting, McCain early on had been hopeful of winning New Hampshire against Obama.

McCain did manage to hold off a challenge from Obama in Georgia - a state that had been an extreme long shot for the Democrats.

But that was small compensation after the loss in Pennsylvania, and the slow collapse of McCain's presidential quest.

The McCain camp had ranked Pennsylvania their top prospect among states they hoped to capture from the Democrats -- the equalizer in the event of wins by Barack Obama in Ohio, Florida and other battleground states held by Republicans.

In the final days of his failing campaign, the McCain camp had thrown all of its resources into Pennsylvania, ramping up advertising spending, and hunting for votes in small towns and rural areas.

The effort had puzzled political strategists. Opinion polls had consistently shown Obama with double-digit margins in the state.

But the McCain camp insisted it saw an opening, and that the gap was narrowing in its favour.

The thinking behind that laser-like focus on Pennsylvania - which saw McCain this week visiting the town of Moon Township, population 22,000 - was that Obama had failed to seal the deal with conservative white voters in the hinterland.

Obama had lost by wide margins to Hillary Clinton in the primary last April in a contest overshadowed by his ill-judged comments about working class voters clinging to guns and religion.

He was put on the defensive once more when video clips surfaced of his former pastor, the Rev Jeremiah Wright, declaring in a now infamous sermon: God damn America.

In north-eastern portions of the state, dominated by working class whites and Catholics, Clinton ran away with 70% of the vote.

In the six months since the primary, Obama devoted considerable resources to building a network in Pennsylvania. With the primary over, he also inherited an important new ally in the state's governor, Ed Rendell.

But issues of race did not entirely evaporate. Despite Obama's efforts, John Murtha, a Democratic member of Congress, expressed doubts last month that white voters in Pennsylvania were ready to vote a black man into the White House.

In the last 72 hours before election day, Republican groups in the state put out a new television ad using clips of Wright.

In the event though, Murtha got it wrong. In exit polls across the country, 90% of voters said race was not a factor in their decision - and it was not in Pennsylvania.