A roller-coaster ride of an election campaign, buffeted by a superstorm and missteps on both sides, finally concludes Tuesday when America decides if President Barack Obama gets a second term or Republican challenger Mitt Romney will move into the White House in January.
The two candidates were on separate whirlwind tours of key swing states on Monday, with Romney’s campaign events in New Hampshire lasting long into the night. Barack Obama, the democrat incumbent, meanwhile, was in Iowa, where he began his first bid for the White House.
Obama has already voted in his adopted hometown of Chicago, becoming the first sitting presidential candidate ever to vote early. Mr Romney is expected to cast his own ballot in Belmont, Massachusetts, later on Tuesday. The election is decided by the electoral college.
Each state is given a number of electoral votes in rough proportion to its population. The candidate who wins 270 electoral votes – by prevailing in the mostly winner-take-all state contests – becomes president.
After stops earlier in Wisconsin and Ohio, Obama closed out his campaign in Des Moines, Iowa, late Monday, returning to the state which put him on the road to the Democratic presidential nomination with a 2008 victory in the lead-off caucuses over Hillary Rodham Clinton, now his secretary of state.
Reporters from all over the world outnumbered the voters in the polling station in the hamlet in northern New Hampshire. It was snowing as the voting began in Dixville Notch, and the temperature stood at minus five degrees Celsius.
Dixville Notch is well known for its longstanding middle-of-the-night vote in the U.S. presidential elections, a symbolic event which marks the casting of the first ballots and the elections’ initial results. Voters also will determine the makeup of a new Congress, choosing all 435 members of the House of Representatives and 33 of the 100 senators.
Analysts expect Republicans to maintain control of the House and Democrats to keep their narrow advantage in the Senate. Two polls showed a closer race: A Washington Post-ABC News poll had Obama leading by one point, 49 per cent to 48 per cent; and a CNN poll had the candidates tied with 49 per cent of the vote.
