BARACK OBAMA WINS NORTH CAROLINA ~ THE UPDATE IS 364 to 173 ELECTORAL VOTES

THE RESULTS


Barack Obama and Joe Biden's new website: www.change.gov

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Obama says Rahm Emanuel accepts chief of staff position

That is the position on the TV show The West Wing (which is playing on cable now) that John Spencer played in the character Leo McGarry.

(President-elect) Barack Obama plays on the beach with his grandfather on his mother's side, Stanley Armour Dunham. (Photo courtesy Obama campaign)

Barack Obama and wife, Michelle Robinson, a fellow Harvard Law School graduate, on their wedding day Oct. 18, 1992, in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo courtesy Obama campaign)

Barack walks along Waikiki Beach shortly before he and his mother moved from Hawaii to Indonesia to live with her second husband, Lolo Soetoro, in 1967. (Photo courtesy of Maya Soetoro-Ng)

Indiana Presidential Results county by county

Indiana Secretary of State website's results are not updated. Indiana was called for Obama-Biden, but the Secretary of State's website shows McCain-Palin in the lead still on November 6, 2008.

When I was volunteering for Obama for America during the primary season, I went to New Hampshire for the week running up to the Primary Day of January 8, 2008. Although outside my comfort zone I made the calls, walked door-to-door for Barack Obama to win. I met nice people, mean people, one who ran out of his house to physically shove me down the road and yell at me to get out and that he owned the road. The two organizing the volunteers were young. One was an unpaid 18 year old young woman and the other was postponing her continuing studies into graduate school to work on the campaign. They worked long hours into the night and hardly slept any hours getting up very early in the morning. They were always professional and pleasant. The residents of the house where we met each day to get our assigned neighborhoods, called a staging area, were friendly, had food and drink always available and virtually gave up their privacy for the campaign. Three of Senator Obama’s Washington, D.C. staff came and joined us in the GOTV effort. I didn’t know what GOTV meant. It means Get Out The Vote.

When I went to the Rhode Island Obama office in Providence November 4, there were people all over the place sitting on the floor with their own cell phones, pages with names and phone numbers on them to call and GOTV. This was going on all over the country in offices. Volunteers giving up time of their busy lives to call swing/battleground/purple states.

In New Hampshire, one particular family that I met in an upscale middle class neighborhood comes to mind when I think of my home state of Indiana where I was born and grew up. That was the only day that I didn’t go out alone. I had a volunteer along who was originally from Australia who was a registered voter in the USA. She went off in one direction, while I walked along my street. I saw a car pulling into a resident driveway on my assigned street. I gingerly approached them. Never knowing the reaction of the people, I felt anxious. There was an adult son and his father getting out of their car. Not only was I welcome, I had to finally tell them I had to go along. It went like this. The son who told me that he had worked in the federal buildings in Washington, D.C. and he didn’t believe that the USA would ever elect a black President told me that his father was a Clinton man. They also owned a home in Italy. The father couldn’t speak English easily. But the son shared the fighting that was going on in the family over the candidates and the USA The son had basically two things to say: 1) In finding out I was originally from Indiana he questioned me on whether I thought Indiana would go for Obama. I said that Gary and Indianapolis would. 2) He believed that American citizens were not informed voters and didn’t care about anybody but themselves, basically. I happen to agree that many USA citizens aren’t informed and that we are a country that thinks that what we think and say is more important than what anyone else thinks. So I didn’t disagree with his assessments and concerns. He was hot. It definitely got him riled. Understandable.

I just wasn’t going to relent and give up the chance that Barack Obama could win.

When I checked the 15 counties in Indiana where Barack won and also checked by how many per centage points, I found something very interesting.
Gary (near Chicago) and Indianapolis (the state capital) did go for Barack.

But the 15 of 92 counties that went for Barack were
Delaware (Ball State University),
Monroe (Indiana University),
Marion (Indianapolis with Marian College, Martin University, Indiana and Purdue University extensions, nearby Vincennes University, etc),
Lake (Gary),
Porter (Valparaiso University),
Starke and La Porte (near Notre Dame University), St.Joseph (Notrre Dame University),
Madison (next to the county of Ball State University), Tippecannoe (Purdue University),
Vigo (Terre Haute University and Rose Hulman Institute of Technology),
Posey (University of Evansville and University of Southern Indiana),
Spencer and Perry both of southwestern Indiana near Evansville.

Amazing the pockets for Obama basically were where the large university populations were. What was also interesting was to compare the per centages. In some counties that were adjacent to one another, the per centages would be the opposite. Where one county went 2 to 1 for Barack Obama, the counties beside it would go 2 to1 for McCain. Not always, but a lot.

I lived in the northeast corner which all counties went for John McCain and Sarah Palin. These were my people. Except I have nothing in common with them apparently. When I went to Wednesday night Bible study a couple of years ago in my childhood church, the subject was government, the Bible and the church. When asked what issues we thought were important politically, I mentioned Darfur and genocide. I imagined not many there were concerned about my mentioned subject. Probably didn’t know about Darfur. The only other person to say anything that I remember two years later, is that one woman was very agitated about her mentioned subject of abortion. It was the only subject she felt was important.

Genocide and abortion. See any comparable parallels? I do. But never have I heard a person who is against legalized abortion speak out against genocide.

But this is Indiana. Although the metropolis of the second largest city (Fort Wayne) of Indiana is 30 minutes away from my two home towns of Huntington and Columbia city ~ this is farmland. In 2006, the combined population of the Fort Wayne Metropolitan Statistical Area was 570,779, making it the third largest metropolitan area in the state. Fort Wayne has many colleges also, but this fact didn’t cause this area to vote a win for Barack Obama.

But Indiana numbers added up to going for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. So the 11 electoral Indiana votes went to President-elect Obama. And this afternoon, North Carolina was determined today. And now the final totals are in. North Carolina Results county by county

Electoral vote final tabulation:
Barack Obama and Joe Biden 364
John McCain and Sarah Palin 173

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Battles split the McCain, Palin camps - Aides say their relationship was getting worse all the way to the end

Emanuel to be Obama's chief of staff

World reacts to Obama’s victory
From the U.S. president-elect’s ancestral homes in Kenya and Ireland to his namesake town in Japan, election fever grips the globe.

Chuck Todd: What happened?
Nov. 5: NBC's Political Director offers analysis on Sen. Barack Obama's "flawless" campaign.

Michelle, On The Move

How is Michelle Obama planning to navigate the journey from candidate's wife to First Lady? And what agenda will she bring to the East Wing? Mrs. Obama spoke to NEWSWEEK'sa Richard Wolffe shortly before the election, in a small equipment room at the side of a high-school gym in Akron, Ohio, just before a campaign rally. She spoke about her future work in the White House and the kind of father she wants the 44th president to be.

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The Fort Wayne-solid-John McCain-Sarah Palin-area
of Indiana includes the northeast corner:

Fort Wayne's ten largest non-government employers:

• Parkview Health System (3,844)
• Lutheran Health Network (3,432)
• General Motors Truck Group (2,981)
• Lincoln Financial Group (1,900)
• ITT Aerospace/Communications Division (1,490)

• Verizon (1,454)
• BF Goodrich Tire (1,380)
• International Truck and Engine (1,240)
• Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (1,120)
• Raytheon Systems (1,100)

Fort Wayne is headquarters for such corporations as Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Company, Centennial Wireless, DeBrand Chocolatier, Home Reserve, K&K Insurance Group, Medical Protective, North American Van Lines (SIRVA), OmniSource Corporation, Rea Magnet Wire, Scott's Food & Pharmacy, STAR Financial Group, Steel Dynamics, Sweetwater Sound, Triple Crown Services, Vera Bradley, and WaterFurnace International.

A major manufacturing center in the Midwest by the mid-20^th century, Fort Wayne included such employers as General Electric, Westinghouse, and International Harvester. Also vital employers, Phelps Dodge, Rea Magnet Wire, and Essex Wire comprised the largest concentration of copper wire production globally during World War II. As the 20^th century came to close, advancements in technology and the reduction of manufacturing jobs nationally lead Fort Wayne to be counted among other cities in the Rust Belt. However, Fort Wayne's economy has diversified with time to include defense and security, healthcare, and insurance. In 2008, Forbes ranked the Fort Wayne metropolitan area 73^rd on its list of 200 metropolitan areas in the "Best Places For Business And Careers" report. Individually, Fort Wayne was ranked 7^th in cost of living and 11^th in cost of doing business.

More about Fort Wayne

Why Indiana Turned Blue

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Hacking Democracy
Very good documentary about the 2000 Election fraud

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