Bush, Kerry In Fight To The Finish

President Bush added his home state of Texas to his win column while Sen. John Kerry laid claim to New York, according to CBS News estimates. But the big three battlegrounds of Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio remained too close to project a winner.

Together, the three states combined for 68 electoral votes, one-fourth of the coveted total of 270.

Polls have closed in more than three-dozen states and CBS News estimates Mr. Bush has 162 electoral votes versus 112 for Sen. Kerry.

Mr. Bush was dominating the South with projected wins in Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia and Kentucky. He also did well in the West and Midwest, capturing Kansas, Nebraska, Indiana, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota and Oklahoma.

Sen. Kerry was the projected winner throughout the East and Northeast with victories in New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, Delaware, Maryland and the District of Columbia, as well as his home state of Massachusetts. He also carried the electoral vote-rich Midwest state of Illinois.

Kerry won the statewide vote in Maine, worth three electoral votes. Maine's northernmost congressional district, worth a single vote, was too close to call.

So was the Senate, where Republicans held a 51-48 advantage with one Democratic-leaning independent. Democrat Barack Obama of Illinois became the third black U.S. senator since Reconstruction.

Only nine of 34 Senate races on the ballot appeared competitive, including Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle's fight for re-election in South Dakota.

Eleven gubernatorial contests were being decided Tuesday, along with 5,800 legislative seats in 44 states.

Among the notable ballot measures was one in California to devote $3 billion for stem cell research. Several states had propositions that would ban same sex marriage.

But all eyes were focused on Kerry's bid to make Mr. Bush the first president voted out of office at a time of war.

"I've given it my all," the president said after voting at a Crawford, Texas, firehouse.

Kerry, a four-term Massachusetts senator, got teary-eyed as he thanked his staff for a campaign's worth of work. "We made the case for change," he said after voting at the Massachusetts Statehouse.

Early returns from exit polls suggest that the Bush administration's Iraq policy is playing only a minor role in the election. Less than a quarter of voters name it as the key factor in their vote for president. Attitudes toward Iraq are fairly evenly split. Roughly half of voters approve of the decision to go war. A bit more than half consider the war in Iraq as part of the war on terrorism. Slightly more than half think the war is going badly and has failed to improve security in the United States.

One issue on which voters' opinions have shifted dramatically since 2000 is the state of the economy. In 2000, only 13 percent of voters leaving the polls said that the nation's economy was not good or poor. In contrast, in preliminary exit poll data from the 2004 election more than half of voters give the economy a not good or poor rating.

Normally, negative perceptions of the economy are generally a bad sign for the incumbent. However, on other economic questions voters' opinions appear more mixed. The proportion of voters who say their own family's financial situation was better today than it was four years ago is about equal to the proportion who say it is worse. Perhaps more importantly, the early data also suggest that voters are splitting almost evenly when asked which candidate they would trust to handle the economy.

The CBS News National Exit Poll results are based on interviews with 9753 voters across the country. The sampling error is plus or minus 1 point.

With polls deadlocked and interest in the race exceptionally high, voter turnout was heavy. Some polls projected Election Day 2004 may see the largest proportion of eligible people voting in a generation.

There were some controversies and legal disputes over close races in some key swing states. In Ohio, a a federal appeals court approved a GOP plan to station observers in polling places. In Florida, the counting of absentee ballots began, but thousands were delayed going out.

Even as voters streamed to polling places to make their picks, the candidates kept campaigning.

"This election is in the hands of the people, and I feel very comfortable about that," Mr. Bush said near his Texas ranch.

On his way back to Washington, he stopped in Columbus, Ohio, and made a few calls from a phone bank. "I promise you, it's me," he told one doubter.

Kerry voted along with his daughters in Boston. "I don't think anybody can anticipate what it's like to see your name on the ballot for president," he said. "It's very special. It's exciting." His wife cast her ballot earlier in Pennsylvania.

Sen. John Edwards, who had cast his North Carolina ballot in early voting, stopped by polling places in Florida and said, "We believe the system's going to work the way it's supposed to." Vice President Dick Cheney voted near his home in Wyoming and said, "When you start a day like this in Jackson Hole, it's going to be a good day."

Long lines were reported at precincts from Florida and North Carolina to West Virginia and Michigan.

"We even had people waiting in line before we opened at 6:30 a.m.," said Wayne County Clerk Robert Pasley in Wayne, W.Va. "In some places, there was more than a dozen people waiting, and that's heavy."

Rain was falling in parts of the Midwest as voters lined up. Brian Fravel, a 43-year-old welder who lives in Columbus, Ohio, said he had never before had to wait to vote. When he arrived at the Northland Church of Christ at 7:30 a.m., he found a long line of people and waited 45 minutes to cast a ballot. "I thought I was early enough to beat it," Fravel said.

By 7:15 a.m., the queue to get into the voting booths at Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel in Philadelphia stretched for half a city block.

The prospect of unprecedented legal challenges hung over Election Day, each side sending thousands of lawyers into motion to monitor the flood of newly registered voters and mount hair-trigger challenges against any sign of irregularity.

"My hope of course is that this election ends tonight," Mr. Bush told reporters, referring to the expected legal challenges in some districts.

Scattered technical problems were reported around the country. One polling location in Mauldin, S.C., was forced to switch to paper ballots because of equipment troubles.

In Volusia County, Fla., a memory card in an optical-scan voting machine failed Monday at an early voting site and didn't count 13,000 ballots. Officials planned to feed and count those ballots Tuesday.