US election summary

Yes they did

In what has been the most protracted and expensive presidential campaign ever, Democrat Barack Obama finally crossed the finishing line last night with a convincing victory over his Republican rival John McCain.

Obama received more than double the number of Electoral College votes than McCain, but elections don't work in quite the same way over there as they do here. Concurrent with the Presidential election were elections for a third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives (the House).

In simplistic terms the House functions like our House of Commons; it's there that legislation is debated and either passed or rejected. Once it's passed, however, it still has to go through the Senate.

Two terms being frequently used in reference to the Senate in this election are "filibuster" and "super-majority". To filibuster is to impede the passage of a bill to such an extent that everyone just says "oh forget it!" This is a way for a minority representation to still have a decisive influence over a piece of legislation and Senators have been known to read out entire chapters of the Bible in this cause.

One way to prevent filibustering is for 60 (three fifths) Senators to close the debate - a process called cloture, for some reason. If one party has 60 or more Senators that's called a "supermajority".

The possession of a supermajority by the Democrats is the one thing that would have defined Obama's victory as a landslide and this hasn't happened.

Here's a table summarising the results so far, with one or two states still to report.