WASHINGTON—Seeking to become America’s first black president, Democrat Barack Obama sprinted into an early lead over Republican John McCain on Tuesday, as an estimated 130 million Americans began casting their votes after a long and bitter election campaign.

Obama held seemingly decisive leads in opinion polls, but a defiant McCain promised an underdog upset in a race expected to be decided by fights in a string of battleground states.

“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 Monday night in Manassas, Virginia, near the site of the first major battle of the American Civil War that ended slavery.

“At this defining moment in history, Virginia, you can give this country the change it needs,” Obama said to voters in the battleground state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential nominee in 44 years.

Obama came up an early 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, becoming the first Democrat to win there since Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Obama also won in Hart’s Location, with 17 votes while McCain had 10. The unpopular Republican President George W. Bush carried both towns in the last two elections.

History’s longest, most expensive White House campaign ended with Obama the hot favorite, enjoying wide leads in national polls and the edge in several battleground states, which could swing the election either way.

Restoring US image

Separated by 25 years and a seemingly unbridgeable political gulf, Obama and McCain had agreed on one thing—their promise to slam the door on the era of George W. Bush.

But they were 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 8-year presidency.

Both have vowed to restore the frayed self-confidence of the world’s lone superpower.

Obama and McCain were chasing the 270 electoral votes needed across the diverse state-by-state electoral map to take the White House.

First state-wide results were not expected until 7 p.m. eastern time (around 8 a.m., Wednesday, in Manila).

Record numbers of Americans were expected at polling stations across the United States as long lines began forming in eastern states at 6 a.m. (7 p.m., Manila time). About 30 million citizens had already cast their ballots in early voting ahead of Election Day.

Long queues stretched in the dark from polling stations waiting to open in states including tightly contested Virginia, neighboring Maryland, and New York.

“The last eight years has been a horror story,” said Michael Smith, a 54-year-old salesman, standing in a queue of hundreds stretching around the block at a polling station in Manhattan. He said he would vote for Obama.

“The country itself is slipping in the (popularity) polls,” he said. “In the end that’s what people are going to vote for today — a new direction.”

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

Democrats also anticipated strengthening their majority in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, although Republicans battled to hold their losses to a minimum and a significant number of races were rated as tossups in the campaign’s final hours.

To the bitter end

Both candidates were campaigning to the very end.

McCain, a 72-year-old, four-term Arizona senator, ended the campaign on Monday with a frantic and grueling dash through several traditionally Republican states still not securely in his camp or even leaning to Obama.

McCain stopped in Florida, Virginia, Indiana, New Mexico and Nevada. And he again passed through Pennsylvania, the only state that voted Democratic in 2004.

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.

“This momentum, this enthusiasm convinces me we’re going to win tomorrow,” McCain told a raucous evening rally in Nevada.

Obama was favored to win all the states that the Democrats captured in 2004, when Bush defeated Democratic Sen. 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 in a combination of smaller states.

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

Pollsters see Obama win

While no battleground state was ignored, Virginia and Ohio, where no Republican president has ever lost, seemed most coveted. Together, they account for 33 electoral votes that McCain must win.

Several polls suggested Obama’s lead was growing.

A USA Today/Gallup poll published on Monday found likely voters nationwide favoring Obama by 11 points over McCain, 53-42 percent, with a margin of error of 2 percentage points. Other polls showed Obama with a 7 or 8 percentage-point lead.

Polls conducted by Quinnipiac University showed Obama with significant leads in two critical swing states, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and tied with McCain in Florida, where the prize is 27 electoral votes. A win for Obama in any of these three states would be hard for McCain to overcome.

Breakthrough victories in any of those traditionally Republican states—including Virginia, Colorado, Indiana and North Carolina—would likely propel Obama to the White House.

The American presidential election amounts to separate contests in the 50 US states, plus Washington, D.C. At stake are 538 electors, with the winning candidate needing to capture at least half plus one. Electors are apportioned to the states roughly according to population.

‘Vote, even if it rains’

Turnout could decide the outcome, and both campaigns revved up multimillion-dollar operations to identify supporters and get them to the voting booth.

Obama has benefited from an astounding record fundraising effort and capitalized on a US demographic shift as more young and nonwhite voters enter the electorate.

The Republicans have tried to curtail Obama’s surge, dubbing him too inexperienced, too liberal and too tainted by associations with the political left to trust with the presidency. The message appealed to core Republican voters, but appears to have failed to convince a significant number of Democrats and independents.

Despite his lead in the polls, Obama urged his supporters against overconfidence. “Even if it rains tomorrow, you can’t let that stop you. You’ve got to wait in line. You’ve got to vote,” he said.

Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and white mother from Kansas, would become the first African-American president, after a stunning rise to the pinnacle of US politics—he was not even a US senator four years ago.

Obama built a huge grassroots political movement which he hopes will drive millions of first-time voters to the polls and stifle McCain’s comeback hopes.

He promises to alleviate the economic pinch for the middle class and repair ties with US allies, open talks with foes such as Iran and Cuba, bring troops home from Iraq and refocus on the Afghan war.

McCain, leveraging his heroism as a Vietnam war prisoner and decades of experience in Washington, would be the oldest president inaugurated for a first term, if elected.

A victory for McCain would make his running mate, Sarah Palin, the first female US vice president.