President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney were locked in a tight race with three critical battleground states too close to call on Tuesday as US voters decided between two starkly different visions for the country.
In early results, Obama and Romney piled up victories in the states they were expected to win easily. Early vote-counting in the swing state of Florida showed them running neck and neck. Obama led in the critical battleground state of Ohio and Romney held an early lead in a third swing state, Virginia.
Romney needs all three of those states to navigate a narrow path to the presidency, while Obama can afford to lose one or two of them and still win a second four-year term.
At least 120 million people were expected to render their judgment between the Democratic incumbent and Romney after a long, expensive and bitter presidential campaign that magnified the differences between Americans wanting to continue Obama’s approach to fixing the ailing economy and those who want to try a new approach.
In a victory that would seem to limit Romney’s path to a victory, Obama won Michigan, the Republican’s state of birth but where he ran afoul of voters by opposing an auto industry bailout pushed by Obama. Some polls had shown a tight race there.
MSNBC projected Obama won Pennsylvania, and Fox News projected the president won in Wisconsin, the home state of Republican vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan. Romney had hoped to pull off an upset in either Pennsylvania or Wisconsin and had visited each state recently.