No Surprises Out Of The Gate

Polls have closed Tuesday night in several states and, as expected, President Bush will carry Georgia, Indiana and Kentucky, while Sen. John Kerry will take Vermont, according to CBS News estimates.

There was insufficient information to project a winner in Virginia and South Carolina.

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.

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.

Americans were turning out in droves to choose between the embattled wartime president and a Democratic challenger who vigorously questioned the invasion of Iraq.

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

Kerry, the 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 before voting at the Massachusetts Statehouse.

With polls deadlocked and interest in the race exceptionally high, elections officials expected heavy turnout. 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.

At dawn, Kerry was handing out information packets to volunteers in La Crosse, Wis., where he said, "We're going to take America to a better place." Aides said he handed out presents on an emotional campaign-concluding flight back to Massachusetts.

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.

For his part, Kerry made Election Day appearances in Wisconsin, where residents can register and vote on the same day. Of the reports of long voter lines, he said, "It's just a magical kind of day."

There were scattered problems amid the magic. Five locations in Franklin County, Ohio, opened up to a half-hour late because poll workers did not show up on time.

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.

CBS News Early Show contributor Craig Crawford said turnout will be the key factor in election 2004.

"Today, for both parties, it's like you host a party and you get a nervous feeling. 'How many people are going to show up?' or 'Will anybody show up?'" he said. "We think a lot of people will show up."

Democrats nurtured faint hopes of winning back the Senate, where Republicans held a 51-48 advantage. Only nine of 34 Senate races on the ballot appeared competitive, seven of them in states where Kerry had not seriously contested Bush.

In South Dakota, all eyes were on the race between the Senate's top Democrat, Tom Daschle, and Republican rival John Thune.

All 435 House seats are up for election, but Democrats had little hope of a takeover. Republicans hold 227 seats, Democrats 205, with one Democratic-leaning independent and two vacancies in Republican-held seats.

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.