NEW YORK (CBS) ― New exit polling information shows the economy is by far the top issue on voters' minds as Election Day at last arrives.
An Associated Press exit poll finds six in 10 voters across the country picked the economy as the most important issue facing the nation. None of four other issues on the list - energy, Iraq, terrorism and health care - was picked by more than one in 10.
Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama joined voters eager to cast ballots on Tuesday before making one last pitch for supporters to turn out for their historic presidential contest. With voters standing in line at polling places around the country, many people didn't need a nudge.
On Tuesday in Phoenix, McCain left his high-rise condominium to cast a ballot at a nearby church before preparing to fly to Colorado and New Mexico. He gave supporters a thumbs-up sign and was in and out of the polling place within minutes.
McCain implored Colorado voters Tuesday to ignore the pundits and polls and help deliver the battleground state. "America is worth fighting for. Nothing is inevitable here," the GOP nominee told his final rally of a marathon campaign.
Buoyed by internal polling that suggested the race here and in other Western states had pulled closer in recent days, the Arizona senator broke his Election Day tradition of going to the movies and instead flew to a raucous airport rally in Grand Junction. He was headed later to meet with volunteers in New Mexico before returning to Arizona to watch election returns.
In Colorado, the GOP presidential hopeful delivered an abbreviated version of his stump speech but did not mention Democratic rival Barack Obama. The Illinois senator made an Election Day campaign trip of his own to Indiana.
"I feel the momentum. I feel it, you feel it, and we're going to win the election," the former Navy pilot told several thousand supporters.
Obama, accompanied by his wife and two daughters, turned in his ballot at his Chicago neighborhood precinct — "I voted," he told reporters, holding up a validation slip — and then headed to neighboring Indiana for a last-minute speech designed to prompt as many Democrats and independents as possible to vote in the Republican swing state.
Afterward, Obama traveled to Indianapolis for final campaign stop to encourage voters in Indiana to support the Democratic candidate from next door. He helped about two dozen members of United Auto Workers Local 550 in Indianapolis work the phones at their union hall.
"I think we can win Indiana, otherwise I wouldn't be in Indiana," he said.
Obama was targeting other swing states in the final hours of voting by doing an hour and a half of satellite television interviews from a Chicago hotel room. The interviews were with local news stations in Florida, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, Nevada, Missouri.
Obama won the first Election Day contest, in two small New Hampshire towns where voters traditionally cast ballots shortly after midnight. President George W. Bush carried both towns in the last two elections.
The running mates were voting, too. Democrat Joe Biden gave a thumbs-up after casting a ballot near his hometown of Wilmington, Del., his mother, wife and daughter at his side. He turned to his 91-year-old mother and joked, "Don't tell them who you voted for."
Republican Sarah Palin arrived overnight in Anchorage, Alaska, to drive up to her tiny hometown of Wasilla to vote before returning to the airport for a flight to Phoenix to join McCain. She cast her ballot in the town's council chamber, where she had presided as Wasilla's mayor.
"Here in Alaska, where we've cleaned up the corruption and we've taken on some self-dealing and self-interests, we've been able to really put government back on the side of the people," Palin told reporters after voting. "I hope, pray, believe I'll be able to do that as vice president for everybody in America, helping to transform our national government, too."
Although the path to an Electoral College triumph appeared narrow for McCain — polls showed Obama with an advantage in many of the battleground states they have contested in the campaign's final weeks — the Arizona senator remained hopeful for a surprise victory.
"I think these battleground states have now closed up, almost all of them, and I believe there's a good scenario where we can win," McCain told CBS' "The Early Show" in an interview broadcast Tuesday.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said he was confident that new voters and young voters would fuel an enormous turnout to benefit the Illinois senator.
"We just want to make sure people turn out," Plouffe told "Today" on NBC. "We think we have enough votes around the country."
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who lost the nomination to Obama in a bitter primary battle but campaigned for him after he received the Democratic nomination, voted with her husband, the former president, near their New York home. She called President Bush "the lamest of lame ducks" and predicted that Obama would begin making presidential appointments and announcing economic policies within weeks.
Waiting in line at polling places, voters appeared determined to have their moment after watching from the sidelines since the candidates were nominated by their parties more than two months ago.
"Either way it goes, we're either going to have the first female vice president or the first African-American president, and I think that's historic and wonderful that we are getting more diverse," said Danielle Ury, 27, who stood outside Cleveland's Pilgrim United Church of Christ.
At Herndon High School in northern Virginia, 51-year-old Jennifer Howard arrived an hour before the polls opened at 6 a.m. EST to be among the first to vote. She was fifth in a line that grew to more than 200 people by the time voting began.
"I knew the lines were going to be really long," Howard said.
President Obama, in his weekly radio address, tells Congress to act quickly and pass financial reform to prevent economy from sliding into another Depression.
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