Seth Wenig/Associated Press
A poll worker, Lisa Amico, right, helped voters in an unheated tent serving as a polling site in Staten Island. More Photos »
Americans went to the polls on Tuesday to decide whether to give President Obama a second term or to replace him with Mitt Romney after a long, hard-fought campaign that centered on who would heal the battered economy and what role government should play in the 21st century.
From makeshift voting sites in East Coast communities devastated by Hurricane Sandy to the more typical voting booths set up in school gyms, libraries and town halls across the rest of the country, people began lining up before dawn to cast their ballots — collectively writing the ending to a bitter, expensive presidential campaign in which the candidates, parties, and well-heeled outside groups were on pace to spend some $2.6 billion.
At the polling place at the Elk’s Club in Fairfax, Va., outside Washington, D.C., voters braved temperatures in the low 30s to stand in an hourlong line to vote at 7 a.m.
Mr. Romney, a Republican who served as the governor of Massachusetts, cast his vote Tuesday morning near his home in Belmont, Mass. When a reporter asked him for whom he had voted, Mr. Romney replied, “I think you know.” Mr. Obama, a Democrat, voted Oct. 25 in Chicago — becoming one of more than 31 million people who voted early this year.
If both campaigns could seem small at times, the issues confronting the nation remained big: how to continue to rebuild after the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression; whether to implement Mr. Obama’s health care law to cover the uninsured, or undo it; whether to reshape Medicare for future beneficiaries to try to curb its costs; whether to raise taxes to reduce the federal deficit or to rely on spending cuts alone; how to wind down the war in Afghanistan without opening the region to new dangers; and how to navigate the post-Arab Spring world.
On their frenzied final full day of campaigning, the candidates reprised their central arguments before crowds in the same handful of swing states where the campaign has been waged for much of the last year, as both men have battled for the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. The campaigns were hoping that huge turnout efforts would tilt contested states their way.
For all the twists and turns that the race has taken since the candidates downed their first greasy pork chops on sticks at the Iowa State Fair, those core, competing messages have remained remarkably consistent.
Mr. Obama reminded a crowd in Columbus, Ohio, on Monday how bad things were when he took office, listed his achievements and argued that he has more work to do.
“In 2008, we were in the middle of two wars and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” Mr. Obama said. “Today our businesses have created nearly five and a half million new jobs. The American auto industry has come roaring back. Home values are on the rise. We’re less dependent on foreign oil than any time in the last 20 years. Because of the service and sacrifice of our brave men and women in uniform, the war in Iraq is over. The war in Afghanistan is ending. Al Qaeda’s on the path to defeat. Osama Bin Laden is dead. We’ve made progress these last four years.”
Mr. Romney told a crowd in Lynchburg, Va., on Monday that the country needs a new direction after Mr. Obama. “He’s tried to convince you that these last four years have been a success,” he said. “And so his plan for the next four years is to take all the ideas from the first term — the stimulus, the borrowing, Obamacare, all the rest — and do them over again. He calls that ‘Forward.’ I call it ‘Forewarned.’ The same course we’ve been on won’t lead to a better destination. The same path means $20 trillion of debt at the end of a second term. It means crippling unemployment continuing for another four years. It means stagnant take-home pay. It means depressed home values. And of course, it means a devastated military.”
But at times the campaign has been as notable for what was left unsaid as for what was said.
Both men seemed to avoid speaking of some of their biggest legislative achievements. Mr. Romney rarely invoked the health care law he enacted as the governor of Massachusetts, which was a model for Mr. Obama’s health care law which many Republicans derided as “Obamacare” and which Mr. Romney has vowed to repeal. And Mr. Obama, for his part, rarely spoke about the $787 billion stimulus bill he signed early in his term, which used a combination of tax cuts, aid to states and infrastructure spending to try to bolster the economy — but which was seen as insufficient by some liberals and as inefficient by some conservatives.
For all the clear differences between the two men, they were both somewhat hazy about their plans for the next four years.
Presidential Campaign Over, Voters Take to the Polls
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Presidential Campaign Over, Voters Take to the Polls
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Presidential Campaign Over, Voters Take to the Polls
