WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US presidential race careened toward another nail-biting finish Tuesday with George W. Bush and his rival John Kerry deadlocked and critical swing states considered too close to call.
The pivotal states of Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio were all up for grabs and analysts suggested the outcome might end up turning on the smaller battlegrounds of Iowa and Wisconsin in the US heartland.
Up to 120 million people cast ballots in the first presidential contest since the September 11, 2001 attacks, capping the longest and costliest campaign in US history that was fought out over terrorism and the war in Iraq.
With polling stations closed in 40 states and the District of Columbia, the early results followed the 2000 election precisely.
Bush was projected to win 18 states and 171 electoral votes out of the 270 needed for victory, US television networks said. Kerry was set to win 10 states and the federal capital with their 112 electoral votes.
The president told reporters at the White House late in the night he was "very upbeat" while Kerry hunkered down at his home in Boston without commenting.
Turnout could approach a four-decade high with long lines of voters reported across the country. Some queued for hours to cast their ballots.
So intense was the interest that some polling centers in Ohio were kept open after their scheduled close to accommodate the huge throngs.
Experts said the high turnout could benefit Kerry, and US stocks turned negative after Internet reports cited what they said were pirated exit polls that suggested a strong early showing for the senator from Massachusetts.
Pre-election polls had called the race a dead heat both nationwide and in the states, where the two sides fought for a majority of the 538 all-important electoral votes awarded in separate, mostly winner-take-all, contests.
Thousands of lawyers were ready to contest close results, raising the spectre of a replay of 2000 when Bush won the presidency only after a recount dispute in Florida settled by the US Supreme Court 36 days later.
The polls closed in the southeastern state and in Ohio, which Bush also captured narrowly four years ago, with US media unable to project a winner. Projections from Pennsylvania in the east were not immediate available.
Some analysts suggested that if Florida (27 electors) went for Bush and Ohio (20) for Kerry, the race could boil down to the midwestern states of Iowa (seven) and Wisconsin 10.
The candidates left their political fate in the voters` hands after eight months and a billion dollars of campaigning which went down to the wire, with both men breaking tradition to stump on Election Day.
As Bush and Kerry cast their own ballots, they both expressed confidence about the final result.
"I know I`ve given it my all," Bush said as he voted in the fire station in his hometown of Crawford, Texas, accompanied by his wife Laura and twin daughters.
"This election is in the hands of the people and I feel very comfortable about that," Bush said. "The issue is, who do you trust? Who do you trust to secure this country? ... People know where I stand."
The president later attended a get-out-the-vote event in Columbus, Ohio before returning to Washington to wait for the results at the White House.
Bush and Kerry stressed the need for an early, definitive result to avoid any repetition of the 2000 election debacle.
"I think it`s very important for it to end tonight," Bush said. "The world watches our great democracy function and (there would) be nothing better for our system for the election to be conclusively over tonight."
"I hope there aren`t challenges. I hope America will vote according to the law today," Kerry said after voting in Boston with his two daughters, Alexandra and Vanessa.
Some claims of irregularities surfaced in Florida with several voters complaining they had received phone calls or flyers sending them to the wrong polling precincts.
Like Bush, Kerry broke with tradition to hold an early Election Day campaign event in Wisconsin,
"We`re going to link hands and hearts and we`re going to take America to a better place," Kerry told 250 supporters in the town of La Crosse. "Let`s get the job done."
US voters also decided the composition of Congress, where Republicans battled to keep a slim majority in the 100-member Senate, but appeared to have retained control of the 435-seat House of Representatives.
Voters cast ballots in the first election in 30 years to be held with US troops fighting abroad, giving their verdict after a heated debate over the 2003 invasion of Iraq and a question of who could keep America safer from terrorists.
The campaign, one of the nastiest in modern US history on the stump and over the media airwaves, pitted candidates with sharply contrasting styles, temperaments and political philosophies.
Bush, 58, the born-again Christian son of ex-president George H.W. Bush, campaigned as a "war president" ready to take the United States into battle alone if necessary to safeguard the country.
The 60-year-old Kerry, a decorated Vietnam war veteran, took a more nuanced stand, preaching the need to repair alliances rent by the Iraq war and reconstruct an international consensus on the global war against terrorism.
Bush called Iraq the central front in the anti-terror war; Kerry branded it a dangerous diversion. The president saw democracy on the march; his opponent saw Iraq descending into chaos.
With the US job market still fragile and Bush`s economic policies under attack, security was Bush`s strong suit as he relentlessly derided Kerry as weak and waffling on defense.
Eric Davis, a political scientist at the University of Middlebury in Vermont, said a higher turnout rate would help Kerry as it would reflect a large number of younger and new voters who had been heavily courted by the Democrats.
If the upper estimate of 120 million voters pans out, it would represent a percentage to compare with the record 63.1 percent turnout in 1960.
In 2000, 106 million, or 51.3 percent, of Americans voted.
Kerry had to win two out of three in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania to have a chance at the presidency. For Bush, the loss of two would make it difficult but not impossible to reach the threshhold of 270 electoral votes.
The rancourous tone of the election campaign was evident among those voters who said their choice of candidate had been motivated by disgust of the alternative.
"I would vote for anyone who is running against George W. Bush," said Allen Strickler, a law enforcement official in Columbus, Ohio, who went for Kerry.
"Kerry just gives me the creeps," said Cindy Dequenne, 32, waiting to vote for the president in another Columbus precinct. "He`s a fake. I don`t trust him."
11/03/2004 - 03:25 GMT - AFP