Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

NEW YORK - An Obama sweep?  Not quite.

Republican survival? Yes, in some states.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama gave his party what had been denied Democrats in 2000 and 2004.

He was within striking distance of matching Bill Clinton's 1996 triumph of 379 electoral votes.

Obama was able to win at least eight states that President Bush carried in 2004: Indiana, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia.

Remarkably, Obama won New Mexico by 15 percentage points — the best performance by a Democratic presidential candidate in that state since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

But he had limited coattails.

Imperiled Republican senators managed to win in Kentucky, where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell held onto his seat, as well as in Mississippi, where appointed Sen. Roger Wicker was projected to win, and in Maine, where Sen. Susan Collins was re-elected.

Filibuster-proof majority?
It now appears the Democrats may not get their much-desired, 60-seat filibuster-proof majority.

Yet the limited coattails should not detract from what is an historic performance.

And Obama won the White House in an unconventional way for a Democratic candidate. Case in point: Indiana.

Obama vividly illustrated the adage that 80 percent of life is showing up.

Indiana has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964, but the Obama campaign made the state a focus of its strategy and it paid off with victory.

Take Vigo County, where Terre Haute is located. Four years ago, Bush carried the county with 53 percent. On Tuesday, Obama won the county with 57 percent.

The results demonstrated that the Obama high command made a brilliant decision.

In Indiana, Obama had the edge in the percent of voters who told exit poll interviewers that they were contacted by his campaign. Thirty-seven percent of Indiana voters sad they had been contacted by the Obama campaign, while on 23 percent said they’d been contacted by the McCain campaign. Voter contacted by the Obama campaign voted 62 percent to 32 percent in his favor.

As Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told Howard Fineman, the campaign would not deviate from the “expanded map” Electoral College strategy.

In the affluent suburban battlegrounds, from Pennsylvania to Colorado, Obama surpassed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s 2004 performance.

In Chester County, Pa., where in recent years farms have been replaced by rows of houses in developments with names such as the “Reserve at Wayne Brook,” Obama won 54 percent. Four years ago, Bush carried Chester County with 52 percent.

Yet there was ticket splitting: Republican congressman Jim Gerlach, whose district includes much of Chester County, won election to his third term with 52 percent.

Bachmann prevails in Minnesota
And even in the face of a solid win for Obama in Minnesota — which the Democrat carried with 54 percent of the vote — the outspoken Obama critic Rep. Michele Bachmann was projected to win re-election.

Bachmann won notoriety for saying on MSNBC's "Hardball" three weeks ago that, “The people Barack Obama has been associating with are anti-American, by and large.”

In Nebraska, after a hugely expensive battle with Democrat Jim Esch, Republican Rep. Lee Terry was projected to hold on to his seat. The contest was a test of the spillover effect of the Obama field organizing effort, which was aiming to win the one electoral vote in Nebraska’s second Congressional District. Nebraska and Maine are the only states to split their electoral votes.

Despite Obama’s remarkable performance in Indiana, embattled GOP congressman Mark Souder easily won re-election.

Black turnout about the same as 2004
There was no doubt that black voters were loyal to Obama. However contrary to predictions of historic participation, exit polls indicated that black turnout was either about the same or only slightly higher than in 2004 in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida and Mississippi. Obama was getting almost all black voters in those states.

And yet he also won states with relatively small black populations, such as New Hampshire, Iowa, Washington state, Minnesota, and Vermont.

The basic trend was that Obama was able to win hotly contested states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio because he was winning in every income group and every age group — and because voters who think the economy is in terrible shape were going for him in a big way.

In Pennsylvania, for example, 57 percent of voters said in exit poll interviews that they were “very worried” about the state of the economy. And Obama won 63 percent of such voters.

At the same time, Obama’s lack of experience at the national level did not seem to trouble voters in battleground states.

In Pennsylvania 56 percent of voters said Obama has sufficient experience to be an effective president — a remarkable result since only four years ago he was a state senator in Illinois, dealing with issues such as whether commuter trains in the Chicago area should have restrooms on them.

Other Pennsylvania findings, according to exit polling:

• Obama won an estimated 60 percent of women voters in the state, besting Kerry’s performance among women in the state four years ago by 6 percent;
• Among voters 65 years old and older, Obama edged McCain, 51 percent to 49 percent;
• White voters were about evenly split between the two candidates, while four years ago Bush carried 54 percent of the white voters.

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