With two of the three key swing states in, a knife-edge United States presidential election effectively narrowed in on Ohio and its crucial 20 electoral college votes.
Florida was called for the incumbent, George Bush, and Pennsylvania to his challenger, John Kerry.
In an exact replica of 2000, states that voted for Bush four years ago voted for him again and states that voted for Al Gore went to Kerry.
The only change on 2000 came in vote-splitting Maine — one of two states that allocates electoral votes proportionally — when one of its four votes went to Bush.
The chances of a dramatic win for either side narrowed through the night as probable swings to Kerry — including Colorado and West Virginia — were called for Bush, and probable swings to the president, including New Jersey, stuck with the Democrats.
Calling is not the same as a declaration — the analysis is based on exit polls and early counting — but United States media groups insist their statistical models have been overhauled to avoid the errors of four years ago when Florida was first called for Al Gore and then for Bush.
The president declared himself ”upbeat” and convinced of his re-election as the calls trickled in.
Several other battleground states are still to be called but none has the voting weight of Ohio or as strong a likelihood of moving to either candidate.
Voting continued in Ohio hours after the scheduled closing time for the polls and it is not yet known when a result will come through.
Record numbers of Americans have voted, and election experts are predicting a turnout of 121-million — considerably higher than the 106-million who voted in 2000, and the highest proportion since 1960.
The election — as all polls since March have suggested it would be — is a cliffhanger, though the Democrat mood has steadily deflated.
A possibility of early drama was raised when Virginia was reported as being too close to call. Any hint that Bush was not easily winning the state, which has not voted for a Democratic candidate since 1964, would have heartened Kerry.
After more than an hour’s agonising wait for the Bush campaign, it was called for the incumbent.
Before the polls closed, pro-Democrat political blogs — posting what they claimed was early exit poll data — gave the challenger a clear lead over Bush that failed to materialise. With 61% of the votes counted, Bush had 39 487 297 votes and Kerry 37 256 447.
A final opinion poll from the respected pollster John Zogby, who came closest to the 2000 result, also called the election for Kerry in the electoral college. His analysis gave the Democrat 311 votes, well above the 270 a successful candidate needs, but put Bush ahead in the popular vote 49,4%-49,1%.
Bush voted on Tuesday in Crawford, Texas, and Kerry in Boston after both engaged in a spurt of unprecedented last-minute campaigning.
”I’ve given it my all,” the president said after casting his vote. Kerry, a senator for Massachusetts, was teary-eyed as he thanked his staff for their work over the campaign. ”We made the case for change,” he said.
Both campaigns have assembled armies of lawyers and if, as is now likely, the White House hinges on a close result in Ohio, weeks of legal action could follow as the election battle is taken to the courts.
For now, voters welcomed an end to the longest, most expensive election on record. ”It’s the only way to make the ads stop,” Amanda Karel, of Columbus, Ohio, told the Associated Press as she waited in line to vote. – Guardian Unlimited Â