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Washington, Nov 4: Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain faced the verdict of US voters on Tuesday after a long and bitter struggle for the White House, with Obama holding a decisive edge in national opinion polls. At least 130 million Americans were expected to cast votes on a successor to unpopular Republican President George W. Bush and set the country’s course for the next four years on the economic crisis, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an overhaul of health care and other issues.
Polls were already open across more than half the United States. They will close in parts of Indiana and Kentucky at 6 p.m. EST/2300 GMT on Tuesday. Voting ends over the following six hours in the other 48 states.
Obama, 47, a first-term senator from Illinois, would be the first black US president. Opinion polls indicate he is running ahead of McCain in enough states to give him more than the 270 electoral votes he needs to win. A victory for McCain, 72, would make him the oldest president to begin a first term in the White House and make his running mate Sarah Palin the first female US vice president.
World stocks rose to a two-week high as investors focused on the election, and U.S. stocks looked poised to open higher on Wall Street where futures were up about 2 percent. If Democrats take the White House and tighten their control of Congress, it may be easier for the new administration to deal with the sweeping financial crisis. Nearly 31 million voters were estimated to have cast ballots before Election Day, taking advantage of early-voting options that have spread to 34 of the 50 US states. But television networks showed long lines of people waiting to vote in battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia.
Both candidates threw off tradition and planned to keep campaigning on Election Day. “We’re going to work hard until the polls close,” McCain, an Arizona senator, told CBS news. McCain embraced his role as an underdog and said he was gaining on Obama. He finished a cross-country, seven-state tour in his home state of Arizona in the early hours of Tuesday morning as he sought the biggest upset in modern politics. In Prescott, McCain spoke of the state’s record of bad luck in getting Arizona candidates elected to the White House. “Tomorrow, we’re going to reverse that...
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