Residents of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire kicked off Election Day by voting at midnight. The result was a tie, reflecting the close race that polls are showing around the nation.
President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney battled down to the wire on Tuesday, mounting a last-minute Election Day drive to get their supporters to the polls in a handful of states that will decide the winner in a neck-and-neck race for the White House.
Capping a long and bitter campaign, Americans began casting their votes at polling stations across the country. At least 120 million people were expected to render judgment on whether to give Obama a second term or replace him with Romney.
Their decision will set the country's course for the next four years on spending, taxes, healthcare and foreign policy challenges like the rise of China and Iran's nuclear ambitions.
National opinion polls show Obama and Romney in a virtual dead heat, although the Democratic incumbent has a slight advantage in several vital swing states - most notably Ohio - that could give him the 270 electoral votes needed to win the state-by-state contest.
Romney, the multimillionaire former head of a private equity firm, would be the first Mormon president and one of the wealthiest Americans to occupy the White House. Obama, the first black president, is vying to be the first Democrat to win a second term since Bill Clinton in 1996.
Whichever candidate wins, a razor-thin margin would not bode well for the clear mandate needed to break the partisan gridlock in Washington.
Romney voted at a community center near his home in a Boston suburb, before dashing off for a pair of last-minute stops, including in Ohio. "I feel great about Ohio," he said when asked about a state that is considered a must-win for him.
Obama, settling into his hometown of Chicago, made a final pitch to morning commuters in battleground states that have been an almost obsessive focus of both campaigns seeking to map out their paths to victory. He also made a surprise visit to a Chicago campaign office.
"Four years ago, we had incredible turnout," Obama told a Miami radio station in a pre-recorded interview. "I know people were excited and energized about the prospect of making history, but we have to preserve the gains we've made and keep moving forward."
The close presidential race raises the prospect of a disputed outcome similar to the 2000 election, which ended with a U.S. Supreme Court decision favoring George W. Bush over Al Gore after legal challenges to the close vote in Florida. Both the Romney and Obama campaigns have assembled legal teams to deal with possible voting problems, challenges or recounts.
Boosting turnout
As Americans headed to voting booths, campaign teams for both candidates worked the phones feverishly to mobilize supporters to cast their ballots.
Polls will begin to close in Indiana and Kentucky at 6 p.m. EST today, with voting ending across the country over the following six hours.
The first results, by tradition, were tallied in Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, both in New Hampshire, shortly after midnight. Obama and Romney each received five votes in Dixville Notch. In Hart's Location, Obama had 23 votes to nine for Romney and two for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.
Election Day, however, came early for more than a third of Americans, who cast ballots days or even weeks in advance.
An estimated 46 million ballots, or 35 percent of the 133 million expected to be cast, were projected to be early ballots, according to Michael McDonald, an early voting expert at George Mason University who tallies voting statistics for the United States Elections Project. None of those ballots were being counted until Tuesday.
Obama, who voted 12 days early, was sure to observe his Election Day ritual of playing pickup basketball with friends and close advisers. The one time he skipped the tradition, he lost the New Hampshire primary in 2008.
"We won't make that mistake again," said senior adviser Robert Gibbs.
If past elections are any guide, a small but significant percentage of voters won't decide which presidential candidate they're voting for until today. Four percent of voters reported making up their minds on Election Day in 2008, and the figure was 5 percent four years earlier, according to exit polls. In Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Va., hundreds of voters were in line shortly after the polls opened at 6 a.m. and had to wait more than an hour to cast their ballot.
The forecast for Election Day promised dry weather for much of the country, with rain expected in two battlegrounds, Florida and Wisconsin. But the closing days of the campaign played out against ongoing recovery efforts after Superstorm Sandy. Election officials in New York and New Jersey scrambled to marshal generators, move voting locations, shuttle storm victims to polling places and take other steps to ensure everyone who wanted to vote could do so.
In New York City, authorities planned to run shuttle buses every 15 minutes Tuesday in storm-slammed areas to bring voters to the polls. In Ocean County along the New Jersey coast, officials hired a converted camper to bring mail-in ballots to shelters in Toms River, Pemberton and Burlington Township.
Renee Kearney, of Point Pleasant Beach, said she felt additional responsibility to vote this Election Day. The 41-year-old project manager for an information technology company planned all along to vote for Obama, but said her resolve was strengthened by his response to Sandy.
"It feels extra important today because you have the opportunity to influence the state of things right now, which is a disaster," Kearney said.
'We know what change looks like'
Obama focused on Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa, the three Midwestern swing states that, barring surprises elsewhere, would ensure that he reaches the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Romney visited the must-win states of Florida, Virginia and Ohio before finishing in New Hampshire.
After two days of nearly around-the-clock travel, Obama wrapped up his final campaign tour in Des Moines, Iowa, on Monday with a speech that hearkened back to his 2008 campaign.
"I came back to ask you to help us finish what we've started because this is where our movement for change began," he told a crowd of some 20,000 people. Obama wiped away tears as he reflected on those who had helped his campaign.
Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, ended Monday in Manchester, New Hampshire, the city where he started his campaign last year. "We're one day away from a fresh start," the hoarse-sounding candidate told a crowd of 12,000.
Obama ridiculed Romney's claims to be the candidate of change and said the challenger would be a rubber stamp for a conservative Tea Party agenda. "We know what change looks like, and what he's selling ain't it," he said in Columbus, Ohio.
Romney argued he was the candidate who could break the partisan gridlock in Washington and said four more years of Obama could mean another economic recession.
The common denominator for both candidates was Ohio. Without the state's 18 electoral votes, the path to victory becomes very narrow for Romney.
Polls have shown Obama with a small but steady lead in the state for months, sparked in part by his support for a federal bailout of the auto industry, which accounts for one of every eight jobs in Ohio, and by a strong state economy with an unemployment rate lower than the 7.9 percent national rate.
That undercut the central argument of Romney's campaign - that his business experience made him uniquely qualified to create jobs and lead an economic recovery.
Romney's aides hoped an 11th-hour visit on Tuesday could also boost his cause in Pennsylvania, a Democratic-leaning state that he has tried to put in play in recent weeks.
Obama fought back through the summer with ads criticizing Romney's experience at the private equity firm Bain Capital and portraying him as out of touch with ordinary Americans.
That was part of a barrage of advertising in the most heavily contested battleground states from both candidates and their party allies, who raised a combined $2 billion.
The rise of "Super PACs," unaffiliated outside groups that can spend unlimited sums on behalf of candidates, also helped fuel the record spending on political ads.
Obama voted in October by taking advantage of early voting procedures. Vice President Joe Biden stood patiently in a long line Tuesday to cast his ballot in his home state of Delaware.
"Oh, I'm feeling pretty good," Biden said when asked if he had any prediction, according to a pool report.
Asked whether this would be the last time he would vote for himself, he said with a grin: "No, I don't think so." The 69-year-old former U.S. senator, who twice ran unsuccessfully for the White House before becoming Obama's running mate, has not ruled out another run in 2016.
More than just the White House
It wasn't just the presidency at stake Tuesday: Every House seat, a third of the Senate and 11 governorships were on the line, along with state ballot proposals on topics ranging from gay marriage and casino gambling to repealing the death penalty and legalizing marijuana. Democrats were defending their majority in the Senate, and Republicans doing likewise in the House, raising the prospect of continued partisan wrangling in the years ahead no matter who might be president.
Obama's Democrats are now expected to narrowly hold their Senate majority, while Romney's Republicans are favored to retain House control.
Battleground states
The election played out with intensity in the small subset of battleground states: Colorado, Iowa, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. Romney's late move to add Pennsylvania to the mix was an effort to expand his options, and Republicans poured millions into previously empty airwaves there.
In the campaign's final hours, voters around the country echoed the closing arguments of the two presidential candidates.
Jim Clark, a 42-year-old computer administrator from Topeka, Kan., is a registered Republican who voted for Obama in 2008, seeking change. But he voted Tuesday for Romney after losing a full-time job two years ago and working temporary assignments since then.
"I'm just ready for a change," Clark said. "It's tougher for me, personally. The economy has not improved."
But 35-year-old Tamara Johnson, of Apex, N.C., said she was sticking with Obama even though she's not as enthusiastic as four years ago.
"I wouldn't say it's easy," said the 35-year-old customs broker as she voted at the Wake County Firearms Education & Training Center. "I have to take into account everything that's been going on and everything I feel will go on. Not just for myself and the future but for my kids. And I think I made the right choice."
After a long campaign that cost record sums and spawned far more political ads than ever before, Americans were showing fatigue at the end. A Pew Research Center poll released Monday showed 47 percent of Americans followed news about the election closely last week, down from 52 percent a week earlier.
Associared Press and Reuters contributed
