All Eyes On Ohio

The presidential race appears to be coming down to a battle for the state of Ohio, after President Bush captured Florida and Sen. John Kerry claimed Pennsylvania – the two other key swing states in the tightly contested election.

Florida's 27 electoral votes gave Mr. Bush a total of 249, compared to 207 for his Democratic challenger. A total of 270 electoral votes are needed to win the presidency.

In the popular vote, Mr. Bush leads Kerry 51 percent to 48 percent.

Polls are closed in all 50 states but a number of key states remain too close to project a winner. Ohio, with 20 electoral votes, and Michigan, with 17, are seen as must-win states for the Massachusetts senator.

So far, the race has mirrored the 2000 election exactly, with Mr. Bush winning all the states he carried four years ago, and Kerry winning all the states former Vice President Al Gore captured.

Mr. Bush swept the South with wins in Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia and Kentucky. He also did well in the West and Midwest, capturing Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, Montana and Alaska.

Kerry dominated the East and Northeast with victories in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, 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, along with the Western states of California, Oregon and Washington.

While most of the attention was on the presidential race, there were also a number of closely watched battles in Congress. Republicans renewed their grip on the Senate, capturing a string of Democratic seats across the South. Democratic leader Tom Daschle faced a strong challenge in South Dakota.

Democratic State Sen. Barack Obama, a political star in the making, easily captured a seat formerly in Republican hands in Illinois, and will be the only black among 100 senators when the new Congress convenes in January. "I am fired up," he told cheering supporters in Illinois.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives were up for election, and CBS News estimates the chamber will remain under Republican control.

Eleven gubernatorial contests were also 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 the focus was 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 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 results from exit voting suggest that young people are playing a greater role in this year's presidential race than four years earlier. In 2000, 17 percent of voters nationwide were between the ages of 18 and 29. They broke nearly evenly between the major party candidates, with 48 percent supporting Gore and 46 percent supporting Mr. Bush.

This election the impact appears to be much more striking. Although they have not turned out in greater numbers nationally, they are leaning heavily toward Kerry, giving him a double-digit lead over the president among this age group.

The results are even more dramatic in several key battleground states. Roughly one in five voters in Ohio is under 30, supporting Kerry by roughly 20 percent over Mr. Bush. About one in six voters in Florida are between 18 and 29, leaning toward Kerry by about twenty percentage points. In Pennsylvania, more than 20 percent of voters are under 30, and they break toward Kerry by nearly twenty-five percentage points.

Older people are leaning toward President Bush, seemingly undoing the Democrat Party's historic advantage with this group. In the last three elections, voters 60 and over supported the Democrat nominee. This year, Bush holds a slight advantage with this age group.

CBS News National Exit Poll results are based on interviews with 11,027 voters. The sampling error is plus or minus 1 point. Exit Polls from specific states are based on interviews with at least 1930 voters, and could have a sampling error of as much as plus or minus 2 points.

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.

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."

Braced for a replay of the 2000 recount, legions of lawyers and election-rights activists watched for signs of voter fraud or disenfranchisement. New lawsuits sought clearer standards to evaluate provisional ballots in Ohio and a longer deadline to count absentee ballots in Florida.

While complaints were widespread, they weren't significant. "So far, it's no big, but lots of littles,'' said elections expert Doug Chapin.

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