Obama the front runner

A confident Democrat Barack Obama stood ready to make history by being elected America's first black president after wrapping up a marathon two-year campaign. But Republican John McCain stubbornly promised an underdog upset in today's election.

Obama and McCain, separated by 25 years and a seemingly unbridgeable political gulf, have agreed on one thing during the longest presidential campaign in US history: their promise to slam the door on the era of George W Bush.

But they are deeply at odds over how to fix the nation's crumbling economy and end the 5-1/2-year war in Iraq, the issues that sent Bush's job approval rating plummeting to a record low at the end of his eight-year presidency.

Record numbers of Americans were expected at polling stations across the US as long lines begin forming in Eastern states at 6am local time, and voters began adding their ballots to 29 million citizens who had already voted in 30 states.

The early-vote tally suggests an advantage for Obama, with official statistics showing Democrats voted in larger numbers than Republicans in North Carolina, Colorado, Florida and Iowa. All four states voted for Bush in 2004.

Democrats also anticipate strengthening their majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate, while Republicans are battling to hold their losses to a minimum, and a significant number of races were rated as toss-ups in the campaign's final hours.

"I'm feeling kind of fired up. I'm feeling like I'm ready to go," Obama told nearly 100,000 people gathered for his final rally last night in Manassas, Virginia, near the site of the first major battle of the US Civil War that ended slavery.

"At this defining moment in history, Virginia, you can give this country the change it needs," Obama told voters in a state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential nominee in 44 years. He later flew home to Chicago, Illinois.

The Illinois senator's final full day of campaigning was bittersweet: he was mourning the loss of his grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham, 86, who helped raise him but died of cancer in Hawaii late on Sunday and never got to see the results of the historic election.

"She's gone home," Obama said, tears running down both cheeks as tens of thousands of rowdy supporters at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte grew silent as he announced Dunham's death. The family said a private ceremony would be held later.

Obama came up a winner in two small New Hampshire towns, where a tradition of having the first Election Day votes tallied lives on. Obama defeated McCain by a 15-6 vote in Dixville Notch, while Hart's Location reported 17 votes for Obama, 10 for McCain and two for write-in Ron Paul. Bush carried both towns in the last two elections.

McCain, a 72-year-old four-term Arizona senator, ended the contest yesterday with a frantic and gruelling dash through several traditionally Republican states still not securely in his camp or even leaning towards Obama.

McCain stopped in Florida, Virginia, Indiana, New Mexico and Nevada. He again passed through Pennsylvania, the only state that voted Democratic in 2004 and where he still hoped for a win.

He sought to raise fears among Americans that the Democratic nominee was outside the US mainstream, saying: "Senator Obama is in the far left lane."

As he sought to distance himself from the unpopular Bush, McCain stressed he was deeply at odds with White House economic policies while promising to clean house in the capital after years of scandal.

McCain said he sensed an upset in the making even though national and key state polls showed him trailing Obama.

"This momentum, this enthusiasm convinces me we're going to win tomorrow," McCain told a raucous evening rally in Henderson, Nevada.

He closed out the endurance test past midnight at a home-state rally in Prescott, Arizona. Obama ran television commercials in Arizona in the campaign's final days after polls showed the race tightening.

Both candidates are campaigning to the very end. Obama plans a quick campaign stop in Indiana today before a massive outdoor rally in front of the skyline in his adopted hometown of Chicago. McCain plans events today in Colorado and New Mexico, then a party at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona.

On election eve, the 47-year-old Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, was favoured to win all of the states Democrats captured in 2004, when Bush defeated Democratic Senator John Kerry. That would give him 251 electoral votes.

He was leading or tied in several states won by Bush, giving him several paths to the 270-vote threshold, such as victories in Ohio or Florida or a combination of smaller states.

McCain, meanwhile, must hold as many Bush states as possible while trying to capture a Democratic stronghold, such as Pennsylvania.