CLEVELAND/CHICAGO  - 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 presidential campaign, Americans cast 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 country’s first black president, seeks to avoid being relegated to a single term, something that has happened to only one of the previous three occupants of the White House.
Whichever candidate wins, a razor-thin margin would not bode well for the clear mandate needed to help break the partisan gridlock in Washington.
Polls have shown Obama with a small but steady lead in the state, due in part by his support for a federal bailout of the auto industry, which accounts for one of every eight jobs there.
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 also hoped an 11th-hour visit on Tuesday could boost his chances 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 criticising 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. Barack Obama also surprised some campaign volunteers in swing state Wisconsin Tuesday with election day calls from a field office in Chicago to thank them for getting out the vote. “This is Barack Obama. You know, the president?” he was heard telling a woman in Wisconsin. Obama arrived at the field office near his home in Hyde Park shortly before 9:00 am (1500 GMT) to applause from staffers, according to an account from pool reporters following the president.
He took off his blue suit jacket, hung it on the back of a chair and said: “Let’s get busy, we’ve got to round up some votes.”