More than any other presidential candidate before, Barack Obama included the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people as part of his core speeches to voters, despite the fact it could harm his bid for the White House.

Obama acknowledged GLBT people when he announced his run for the presidency and in front of television audiences and church congregations. He mentioned them when he accepted the Democratic nomination in Colorado, and in his final campaign stops in Jacksonville, Fla., Columbus, Ohio, and Raleigh, N.C.

Still, he cruised to a landslide victory over Republican John McCain.

In messages that included GLBT people when he needed the votes and when he had cinched victory, President-elect Obama won the White House Tuesday night. The triumph marked a historic moment in American history – with Obama’s election as the first black president – and a dramatic improvement in the political climate in Washington, D.C., for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

In the third line of his speech before more than 100,000 people gathered in Grant Park in his adopted hometown of Chicago, Obama said his election is testament to the power of democracy “spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled.”

Winning 338 electoral votes to McCain’s 163, Obama did not require the support of GLBT voters to secure his win. However, voting appears to have been very close in some states that were important to his success. In Florida, where a typical distribution of the gay votes – historically (70 percent) – would have provided the Democrat with about 275,000 votes, Obama won by only 199,000 votes. And while the Sunshine State overall gave Obama 51 percent of the vote, heavily gay Miami-Dade – home of gay popular resort South Beach – gave him 58 percent.

Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese characterized Obama’s win Tuesday night as a “paradigm shift” for GLBT people.

“The pendulum has swung away from the anti-gay forces that dominated the political landscape for too long and toward new leadership that acknowledges our equality,” he said.

Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, called Obama’s election “the dawn of a new political era of hope” that “brings a promise for a sea change in the tenor of the national dialogue on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.”

The voting results reported this week are definitive but not official. They are based on a combination of data – surveys collected from voters at the polls on Nov. 4, actual results from selected precincts and surveys conducted by phone prior to Tuesday.

The data was gathered on behalf of the National Election Pool, a coalition of ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC and the Associated Press. The polling firm of Edison Media Research collected the data at 1,300 precincts around the country, involving every state; but, more sampling was done in the most competitive states. While most of the data was gathered at polling places, some was gathered by phone to include samples from Washington and Oregon – which vote exclusively by mail – and to account for people who were able to cast their votes before Nov. 4. The telephone surveys collected data only from landlines, but the exit polls gathered information about cell phones from exit poll voters to use in assessing their projections.

Data available thus far on voting in heavily gay precincts suggest the GLBT vote for Obama was at an unprecedented high. In the last several presidential elections, the percentage of GLBT voters supporting the Democrat has hovered around 70 to 75 percent. But Tuesday’s voting was much stronger:

* In heavily gay Provincetown, Mass., 87 percent of voters supported Obama, compared to only 11 percent for McCain, and two percent for others or no votes. Massachusetts overall voted 62 percent for Obama, 36 percent for McCain.

* While 61 percent of Californians supported Obama versus 37 percent for McCain, 85 percent of heavily gay San Francisco supported Obama versus 13 percent for McCain and two percent for others.

* Fifty-five percent of voters in Pennsylvania supported Obama versus 45 percent for McCain, but in heavily gay Wards 2 and 5 of Philadelphia, 83 percent of voters supported Obama.

* In heavily gay Dupont Circle Precinct 15 in Washington, D.C., Obama won 89 percent of the vote.

* In the heavily gay precinct 1233 in Dallas, 63 percent of the vote supported Obama while 57 percent of the city did so and 55 percent of the state supported McCain.

* Chicago’s heavily gay Ward 44 went 86 percent for Obama and 13 percent for McCain.

A Harris poll web-survey conducted October 20-27 with 231 self-identified GLBT “likely voters” predicted 81 percent of GLBT voters favored Obama while 16 percent favored McCain. A similar poll in August had shown 68 percent favored Obama, 10 percent McCain.

Patrick Sammon, president of Log Cabin Republicans, a national GLBT Republican group, said he puts more trust in data from the overall exit poll data nationally, which said once again that four percent of voters were GLBT and that 70 percent voted for Obama, 27 percent for McCain and three percent for others.

“GLBT voters don’t live in just Dupont Circle and Chelsea,” said Sammon in a telephone interview Wednesday morning.

But U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) said both sets of data may be right.

The results from precincts that are heavily gay, she said, reflect a demographic that has significant access to information about each candidate’s stand on GLBT issues, while the national exit poll is capturing GLBT voters in places that may not have that kind of information at the ready. And in those places, she said, GLBT people are “making their minds up on a larger array of issues.”

Hilary Rosen, a longtime Democratic GLBT activist and political director for the Huffingtonpost.com, wrote Monday she believes McCain lost the election in May 2006 when he “went to kiss the ring of Jerry Falwell.”

“He began to support every anti-gay initiative he could find,” wrote Rosen. “On those and so many other issues, he merged into the George Bush and right wing clone that in these closing days of the campaign have choked him beyond breath.

In a stump speech on countless campaign stops in the final days of his campaign, Obama repeatedly urged Americans to stay true to the name “United States of America.”

“Yes, we can argue and debate our positions passionately,” said Obama, “but all of us must summon the strength and grace to bridge our differences and unite in common effort – black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American; Democrat and Republican, young and old, rich and poor, gay and straight, disabled or not.”