WASHINGTON, Oct 31 (AFP) - Scarred by the September 11 attacks and polarized by a bitter campaign, Americans vote Tuesday whether to keep President George W. Bush or replace him with Senator John Kerry in a race too close to call.
The spectral reappearance of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden days before the election crystallized the stakes in a highly charged contest dominated by anxiety over national security and the war in Iraq.
Polls gave the Republican president a slight lead nationwide, but the scramble for decisive electoral votes awarded by each state careened towards a tight finish that some feared could end up in the courts like four years ago.
At stake were diametrically opposing visions of the world: Bush vaunted his readiness to go into battle alone to keep the country safe from terrorism, Kerry preached the need to build alliances.
Their mutual dislike evident, and their campaigns pulling out all stops to paint each other in often caricatural terms, the battle between Bush and Kerry left the US electorate more divided than ever.
For the Republicans, Kerry was an unprincipled political waffler, ready to do anything to win. For the Democrats, the president was an arrogant, incompetent leader who refused to face reality or own up to his mistakes.
After reportedly spending a billion dollars in the costliest presidential campaign in US history, the two sides sprinted to the climax feverishly chasing last-minute votes that could tip the outcome.
Both were crunching numbers to knit a majority of the 538 electoral votes apportioned among the 50 states and the federal district and awarded in separate, mostly winner-take-all contests. Victory required 270 electors.
The parties concentrated their armies of volunteers and television advertising money in less than a dozen closely fought states, with a total of 135 electoral votes, that held the key to the White House.
Most of their attention was lavished on the states of Pennsylvania in the East, Ohio in the Midwest and Florida in the Southeast, which have a combined 68 electors. But other states also had the potential to turn the result.
Party and election officials geared for any number of nightmare scenarios that could produce a replay of the 2000 ballot, which hinged on a disputed recount in Florida that the US Supreme Court had to settle five weeks later.
Many experts fretted that a tight election could produce several Floridas. They could not even rule out a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College that could force the House of Representatives to choose the president for the first time since 1824.
Bush, 58, appeared vulnerable in his bid for a second, four-year term with a job approval rating below 50 percent in most polls, way down from the days when the country rallied around him after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
But the surveys also showed the president more trusted than Kerry to deal with global terrorism and get out of Iraq, which some 130,000 US troops are still trying to stabilize after the invasion he launched last year.
His leadership credentials and reassuring rhetoric were formidable assets in a country whose jitters have put an official report on the September 11 attacks on the list of best-selling books here.
"We have the terrorists on the run. And as long as I am your president, we'll be determined and steadfast, and we will keep the terrorists on the run," Bush repeated on the campaign trail, in between lashing Kerry as weak and unfit for command.
The 60-year-old Kerry, a decorated Vietnam war veteran and senator from Massachusetts for two decades, promised a "fresh start" for the United States if given a presidential mandate.
For him, Bush's record has been a litany of failures: alliances left in tatters, an Iraq in chaos, terrorism still rampant and bin Laden at large, and an economy bleeding jobs and sagging under record budget deficits.
If Bush declared Iraq a central front in the war on terror, Kerry saw it as a dangerous diversion from the real enemy, bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda terrorists.
The war was from the start a thorn in Kerry's bid for the presidency, with the Democrat at times struggling to explain why he first voted to authorize military action in Iraq and then turned to opposing the operation.
For weeks he was unable to make much headway in the issue, even as evidence mounted that Saddam Hussein did not have the weapons of mass destruction that Bush used to justify the March 2003 invasion.
But with his campaign lagging in September, Kerry sharpened his attacks over Iraq, calling the war ill-conceived and badly planned and accusing the president of consistently misleading the US public.
"The president's failures in Iraq have made us weaker, not stronger in the war on terrorism. That is the hard truth. The president refuses to acknowledge it," the Democrat said.
Public opinion abroad has generally been for Kerry, with Bush seen as an unapologetic unilateralist. But inside the United States, the president's folksy style has won him points, particularly in rural areas.
Kerry, who clawed his way back into the race with strong performnances in his three debates with Bush, looked stiff and patrician on the stump, even if he tried to be one of the boys guzzling beer or shooting geese.
Other candidates were also vying for the presidency, but none has drawn much attention other than independent Ralph Nader, who threatened to siphon off some votes from the Democrats as he did four years ago.
Voter turnout shaped up as a key factor Tuesday, with signs that it may be significantly higher than the 106 million Americans who cast ballots in 2000.
In Florida and 25 other states where early voting opened weeks ago, many polling places were jammed by people rushing to cast their ballot.
While the presidential race was the main event Tuesday, some 156 million registered voters were also deciding the composition of Congress, where the Republicans control both houses, 11 governorships and a series of state referenda initiatives.
10/31/2004 03:06 GMT - AFP