Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/obama-supporters-gather-in-chicago-on-election-night Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Tends of thousands of supporters of Barack Obama gathered in Chicago's Grant Park Tuesday night to wait out election night. Judy Woodruff reports from the scene. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JIM LEHRER: All right, Judy is in Grant Park in Chicago, home base for the Obama campaign tonight. Judy? JUDY WOODRUFF: Jim, listening to David and Mark just now talk about this long campaign, I guess you could say what's happening in Grant Park, it's the peace before the — either the mourning or the celebration later tonight. And in a way, it's a metaphor for this campaign.We are expecting a huge crowd here, 70,000 people inside the fence, maybe many, many more outside. We are on the shores, as you said, Grant Park, the shores of Lake Michigan, in the heart of downtown Chicago, the home town of Barack Obama.It's a metaphor for the campaign because they have worked so hard to get to this time. And when you talk to them, they say, at this point, we can simply wait to see what happened.They are exhausted from the long campaign. They are cautiously optimistic, based on what they've seen come in, in the early voting. And they are taking no chances.They were working the phones today, phone banks all over the country, knocking on doors. Senator Obama and his wife were giving interviews, urging people to go vote. So this is an effort that doesn't stop. JIM LEHRER: Judy, what kinds of things are going to happen on that stage? I mean, are they — when this thing is finally over, when will it be — what time — what kind of timeframe are we working toward? JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we have been told, Jim, that Sen. Obama will not be here before 11 o'clock Eastern time. That's when the polls close, the last polls close in the state of California in the Pacific coast. In other words, they're going to wait for most of the polls to close. They won't have closed in Alaska.But at that point, their view is that that's the earliest that this race could be called one way or another, and Sen. Obama will not appear before that.Up until then, there will be some entertainment, but he's going to be watching the returns here in a hotel in Chicago, moving from his home in Hyde Park to the Hyatt Hotel here, along with his senior advisers. They're going to stay there, basically stay out of sight until the race can be safely called one way or another.