Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama decisively won the 2008 presidential election tonight, sweeping past Republican candidate Senator John McCain on a wave of calls for change from voters across the country.

Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas, will be the nation’s first black president. A graduate of Harvard Law School, the first-term Illinois senator’s win capped off a meteoric rise in which he ascended from the Illinois State Senate to the White House in less than five years.

In winning the presidency, Obama swept numerous swing-states, including Ohio, Florida, and Colorado. He is the first Democrat to win Virginia since President Johnson in 1964.

On his way to the Oval Office, Obama shattered fundraising records, defeated one-time Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, and convinced a country to focus on his message of change, not his relatively thin resume.

Obama’s victory over McCain, a decorated Vietnam veteran from Arizona, also represents a transition between political epochs, from the generation defined by that war and its aftermath to a younger generation that largely escaped its scars.

Speculation about Obama’s political career began even before he graduated magna cum laude in 1991 from the Law School, where he made history as the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. Despite suggestions from his professors that he apply for a federal court clerkship, by his second year Obama had already made clear his intention to pursue a career in grassroots organizing and civil rights litigation. Obama also later become a lecturer on constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School.

Obama’s rise has surprised many Washington insiders, but days before announcing that he would run for president, he had already called Law School professors to tell them that he had his sights set on the White House.

Over the course of the campaign, Obama became one of Harvard’s favorite sons, stirring up excitement among student groups and faculty members alike. Professors who remembered Obama as a “brilliant” and “unique” student rallied behind him in droves, and other professors held fond memories of his wife Michelle, who graduated from the Law School three years before him.

Among Obama's guests at an election night rally in Chicago's Grant park was Law School Professor Laurence H. Tribe '62, who said he was "ecstatic" at his former student's victory.

"I couldn't be more excited—for him ,for the country for the world," said Tribe in between a conversation with Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill. "I think this is a great moment in American history, and a new chapter is about to begin."

Obama tapped his professors' support throughout his bid for the presidency for money, connections, and advice. A top-dollar fundraiser held at the Cambridge home of professor David B. Wilkins ’77 in early 2007 not only reunited him with old classmates and Law School professors, but also allowed him to rub elbows with influential Massachusetts Democrats.

By the end of the election cycle, Harvard academics had contributed over $200,000 to the Obama campaign in direct donations, and two of Harvard’s most distinguished law professors—Laurence H. Tribe ’62 and Cass R. Sunstein ’75, Obama’s erstwhile colleague at the University of Chicago—emerged as staunch backers of his presidential campaign.

—Staff writer Athena Y. Jiang can be reached ajiang@fas.harvard.edu.

—Check TheCrimson.com throughout the evening for updates.