Mapping it out: A breakdown of the 2008 election results

Sen. Barack Obama won the election in a landslide yesterday, taking 338 electoral votes to Sen. John McCain's 163 as of press time. In comparison to 2004, when President George W. Bush won a second term in the White House by a 286 to 252 margin over Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Obama took yesterday's election in a convincing fashion reminiscent of the Nixon and Reagan years. Unlike Bush's chief strategist Karl Rove, who focused on garnering just enough votes to win the election, the Obama campaign devised a 50-state strategy that refused to discount even the reddest of states. It paid off: Obama took swing states Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, putting the Democratic Party back in the White House for the first time since the Clinton administration left office in January 2001.