Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry stumped in the Midwestern state of Wisconsin on Tuesday, the Election Day, calling voters to vote for "a change in direction."
"You have a choice, all Americans have this choice today," the Massachusetts senator said in La Crosse, Wisconsin, before heading home to Boston to vote.
Accusing the Republican incumbent President George W. Bush of being responsible for job losses, high deficit, rising health care costs and a failed policy in Iraq, Kerry said Bush "made a choice without a plan to win the peace."
"We need a commander in chief who knows how to bring other countries to the table," he said, urging voters in the battleground state to go out and vote for "a new beginning" and "a change of direction."
Bush and his wife, together with their twin daughters, cast their votes on Tuesday morning at a polling station near his ranch at Crawford, Texas, before heading for one last get-out-the-vote stop in Columbus, Ohio.
No Republican has won the White House without winning Ohio, a state that has lost some 230,000 jobs since Bush took office. The two candidates were running neck and neck in the state.
Expressing confidence that he would win, Bush said "the people will make the right decision."
He said he hoped the United States would avoid the same kind of bitter recount battle that resulted in his narrow victory in 2000, and that his goal, if reelected, would be to "bring people together, set an agenda, which would be to make sure America is secure, expand our prosperity and move forward and bring Republicans and Democrats together."
"My hope, of course, is that this election ends tonight," he said.
With polls showing the race deadlocked, both candidates made a last effort to woo voters to come out and vote.
Bush made a 19-hour campaign tour across six states on Monday, including some battleground states, while Kerry campaigned in Florida and three key states in the Midwest.
It was likely that 58-60 percent of eligible voters, or 117.5 million121 million, would vote at some 200,000 polling stations across the country this year, according to the non-partisan Commission for the Study of American Electorate.
But the outcome might hinge on a dozen battleground states, including Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, that could decide who could win the White House.