TAMPA, United States (AFP) - Each claiming victory in their first debate, President George W. Bush and Democratic White House hopeful John Kerry courted voters in key up-for-grabs states 32 days before the election.
The challenger, who told Bush in their face-to-face exchange on Thursday that his Iraq war was "a colossal error in judgment," campaigned in hotly contested Florida, which decided the disputed 2000 election.
The Republican president, who accused his rival of alienating allies and emboldening enemies with "mixed messages" about whether the March 2003 invasion was worth the cost, was to woo supporters in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.
Kerry hoped to capitalize on solid reviews of his performance in the first of three debates to erode Bush's steady edge in national polls as well as in the handful of battleground states that will decide the November 2 vote.
A Gallup poll for CNN gave Kerry a 46 percent to 37 percent win over the president but the survey said Bush still had the support of 51 percent of voters against 47 percent for Kerry.
"What the American people saw last night is what I have known all along, which is John Kerry has strength, he has conviction. He's completely prepared to be commander in chief," Democratic vice presidential hopeful John Edwards told NBC.
"How can you expect a leader to prevail in Iraq, in a mission they don't believe in?" White House communications director Dan Bartlett told Fox News Channel.
Experts warned that early post-debate polls tend to have high error margins, and that it will take days to get an accurate assessment of the exchange's impact on what is one of the hardest fought campaigns in recent US history.
But many also agreed that the close-fought debate raised the stakes for the second presidential face-off, set for October 8. A third is scheduled for October 13.
As tens of millions of Americans watched, Kerry made some of his toughest charges yet against Bush, saying his upbeat rhetoric on Iraq did not match the brutal realities on the ground, and branding the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein a monumental mistake that has left US alliances "in shatters"
National security was the agreed-upon theme, but Iraq dominated as the two candidates battled over how to stabilize that war-torn country, where more than 1,000 US soldiers have died amid deadly chaos that shows no sign of ebbing.
The two also clashed on approaches to the North Korean nuclear crisis -- Bush warning against Kerry's call for bilateral talks -- and to Iran's nuclear program and how to prevent Tehran from acquiring atomic weapons.
But both agreed that the most serious threat to US national security was the possibility that terrorists like Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network might get their hands on nuclear materials.
Leading US dailies agreed that the debate was a tie.
"If Americans who tuned into last night's presidential debate were waiting for one of the candidates to catch the other in a fatal error, or leave him stammering, the event was obviously a draw," wrote The New York Times.
The daily, however, gave Kerry points for looking presidential, keeping Bush on the defensive, arguing that Iraq had nothing to do with the war on terror and that Bush rushed into the war without an exit strategy.
The Los Angeles Times suggested a mixed result: "Kerry won Thursday night's debate on foreign policy by a comfortable margin, but Americans may yet decide that President Bush is better able to clean up the mess he created in Iraq."
The Washington Post sided with Kerry's charge of a gap between Bush's public assessments of Iraq and the realities there, adding Kerry was effective in stressing how the nuclear threat from North Korea and Iran has increased under Bush's watch.
Bush supporter and 2000 Republican party presidential hopeful Senator John McCain said he thought it was a good debate.
"I thought that John Kerry did a good job style-wise. I think that the president was very convincing in his conviction that what he has done is right, what he will do is correct," McCain said on CNN.
Former Democratic Texas Governor Ann Richards, bested by Bush in debates a decade ago, said Kerry appeared to be someone ready to assume the mantle of commander in chief.
"I was really pleased ... we were all really nervous going into this debate and I thought that John Kerry knocked it out of the ballpark," Richards said.