Bill Clinton earlier accused Barack Obama of peddling a "fairy tale".

Today, the US has voted to reject the nightmare of George Bush's America and has elected for the fairy tale.

Americans are more pessimistic today that at the time of any election in four decades.

And they have good reason. "We are in a recession the likes of which we haven't seen since the early 1980s," said Anirvan Banerji of the Economic Cycle Research Institute in New York.

"We are already 10 months into this recession and we don't see any end in sight."

The economy was the dominant issue for 63pc of voters, according to exit polls.

The Bush Administration has given the US two recessions now, and two unfinished wars.

Of a panel of 100 US presidential historians, 61 have voted Bush as the worst president in 2¼ centuries.

He is the most unpopular in the history of US opinion polling.

Americans have rejected the party of Bush and embraced a candidate who, in many ways, is his exact opposite.

He is not only youthful and black, articulate and cosmopolitan, he's also well to the left of Bush on many key issues.

"Bush and the economy were the fundamental dynamics of this election," observed the commentator E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post.

This leads the political scientist Larry Jacobs of the University of Minnesota to conclude that the election was a "negative referendum" on Bush rather than a positive mandate for Obama.

Yet Obama generated an enthusiasm without precedent in modern politics, with a bigger voter turnout expected than at any election since 1908.

The Republican candidate, John McCain, offered experience. Americans opted instead for one with fewer traditional qualifications than any president in decades, a man who has been in politics for only four years and has never held any executive office.

Obama's qualification was that he offered hope for a better America, or, as he put it, "change you can believe in".