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On February 10, 2007, Barack Obama, then junior United States Senator from Illinois, announced his...

On February 10, 2007, Barack Obama, then junior United States Senator from Illinois, announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States in Springfield, Illinois. On June 3, 2008, he secured enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party for the 2008 presidential election. He was the first African-American in American History to be nominated by a major party. On November 4, 2008, Obama won the presidential election to become the 44th President of the United States, succeeding George W. Bush. Obama announced his candidacy at the Old State Capitol building, where Abraham Lincoln delivered his "House Divided" speech in 1858. Obama was the main challenger, along with John Edwards, to Democratic Party frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton for much of 2007. His initial victory in the Iowa caucus helped bring him to national prominence from a crowded field of Democratic challengers, and his campaign began to trade a series of hard-fought state wins with expected frontunner Clinton in January, a trend that continued through Super Tuesday, in which Obama had great success in large rural states and Clinton was nearly as dominant in high-population coastal