The next time Wisconsin asks for federal permission to bypass a health-care regulation or help in reviving its manufacturing sector, it will be good to have a state-backed Democrat in the White House, Gov. Jim Doyle said Tuesday.

Democrat Barack Obama won Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes with a decisive victory over Republican John McCain — a win that contrasts with the close elections in 2000 and 2004.

"He is going to be a very practical president, and he's going to be focusing on issues we're focusing on in Wisconsin: How to rebuild our manufacturing system, how to create high-tech jobs, how to create a health-care system that is accessible and affordable," Doyle said in an interview Tuesday.

When the Illinois senator enters the White House in January, it will mark the first time since December 1978 that a Democrat served as president and Wisconsin's governor.

Obama's general election victory in Wisconsin was built on the campaign foundation he laid during the Democratic primary in the state in February, when he earned 58 percent of the vote compared with New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's 41 percent.

That victory was part of a string of primary or caucus wins that month that provided Obama with the lead for the Democratic nomination that he never relinquished.

And in a year in which voters were angry at incumbent Republican President Bush and worried about the economy, Obama had a built-in advantage over McCain, said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, which did extensive polling in Wisconsin.

"They had February locked and it turned out the February primaries and caucuses made him president of the United States," Brown said. "That means Wisconsin."

Wisconsin win

Obama's Wisconsin win Tuesday resulted from a superior organization, a flood of advertising, an impressive voter identification and turnout effort and a consistent message calling for change, political consultants and experts said.

But the most important factor was the flagging economy, they agreed.

Nine in ten voters in Wisconsin said they're at least somewhat worried about the economy, according to an exit poll of 2,440 voters for The Associated Press. The poll had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

"That is the only issue, and anger with the status quo," Gene Ulm, a Republican pollster who does work in Wisconsin, said of the economy. "The economy is driving the middle, the beginning and the end."

Katie Mulholland, 24, said Obama got her vote because his emphasis on education and energy independence were potential areas of growth for the ailing economy.

"I think that's going to create jobs and that's important," she said of those issues.

A series of polls in Wisconsin showed Obama with a steady advantage over the summer. But after the GOP convention in September they showed the two candidates deadlocked. The dead heat was mirrored in national polls.

Then the Wall Street crisis hit in mid-September. Voters blamed the incumbent administration, and Obama — who already had most voters' trust on economic issues — opened a lead on McCain in Wisconsin and other key states, Ulm said.

Obama won over women, men, young voters and black and white voters in Wisconsin, according to the AP exit poll.

Doyle said Wisconsin voters "responded so positively" to Obama.

Perfect candidate

Wisconsin has not given its electoral votes to a Republican since 1984, when Ronald Reagan won it in a landslide victory. But Democrats won by just 5,700 votes in 2000 and 11,400 in 2004.

This year, despite Bush's unpopularity, political experts predicted McCain would be the perfect Republican candidate to catch fire with Wisconsin's middle-of-the-road electorate because of his independent streak and outsider persona. The Arizona senator and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, made six appearances in the state after the GOP convention, but they scaled back on advertising during the final weeks of the campaign.

"In any other year those rules would hold true," Ulm said of McCain's chances in Wisconsin. "But when you have such a decided desire for change it is very difficult to be competitive."

Leah Knope, a Madison Republican, said she's disappointed.

"I'm extremely disappointed but not surprised, with McCain pulling out and not even campaigning here in the last couple of weeks," Knope said.

Access to president

Doyle was one of the first governors to endorse Obama, and he said he looks forward to having access to the president in a way he never did under Bush.

And at a time when the state is facing a $3 billion budget shortfall, Doyle said he hoped Obama would be more focused than Bush was or McCain would have been on helping the state weather the fiscal crisis.

Doyle said he was confident a President Obama would help the state rebuild its infrastructure and improve worker training, and said the state's SeniorCare prescription drug program could serve as a model for the nation.

"They tried to kill SeniorCare," Doyle said of the Bush Administration. "We had to get Congress to override the president on that one."

— State Journal reporter Deborah Ziff contributed to this report.