By Michael O'Brien, NBC News
President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney awaited the results from their hard-fought election battle as polls began to close Tuesday night.
Jewel Samad / AFP - Getty Images
President Barack Obama calls a volunteer from a campaign office in Chicago, Illinois, on Election Day, November 6, 2012.
Voting ends and the business of tabulating raw votes was set to begin to pile up at 7 p.m. ET, as polls fully closed in six states, including the key swing state of Virginia. Other states will follow suit throughout the evening, setting either Obama on course for a second term or expelling an incumbent president for his challenger for the first time since 1992.
Exit poll data among early voters suggested that the economy, the issue on which Obama and Romney focused for much of their campaign this year, was at the front of voters’ minds across the country. But a series of battleground states were likely to decide the election, awarding their electoral votes and helping either Romney or Obama amass the 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.
Obama was set to have dinner with the first family at their home in south Chicago, while Romney joined his family at a hotel suite near his election night party in Boston. The president spent the day doing a series of interviews and participating in a pick-up game of basketball, an Election Day tradition for Obama.
Brian Snyder / Reuters
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney talks to reporters on his campaign plane en route to Boston, Mass.,to await the result of the presidential election November 6, 2012.
Romney, meanwhile, added some last-minute campaigning to his schedule instead of enjoying down time. He stopped in Cleveland and Pittsburgh in a last-minute bid for votes in the crucial battleground state of Ohio.
Speaking to reporters traveling with him from Pittsburgh to Boston, Romney said he sensed that victory was on the horizon.
“You know, intellectually, I've felt we're going to win this and have felt that for some time,” Romney told reporters traveling with him from his last campaign stop from Pittsburgh back to Massachusetts. “But emotionally, just getting off the plane and seeing those people standing there … just seeing people there cheering as they were connected emotionally with me and I not only think we’re going to win intellectually, I feel it as well.”
Reuters, Getty Images
In the final push in the 2012 presidential election, candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama make their last appeals to voters.
Both candidates could know their fate in just a few hours, as vote totals and additional exit poll data paints a bigger picture of the American electorate this Election Day.
More content from NBCNews.com:
President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney awaited the results from their hard-fought election battle as polls began to close Tuesday night.
President Barack Obama calls a volunteer from a campaign office in Chicago, Illinois, on Election Day, November 6, 2012.
Voting ends and the business of tabulating raw votes was set to begin to pile up at 7 p.m. ET, as polls fully closed in six states, including the key swing state of Virginia. Other states will follow suit throughout the evening, setting either Obama on course for a second term or expelling an incumbent president for his challenger for the first time since 1992.
Exit poll data among early voters suggested that the economy, the issue on which Obama and Romney focused for much of their campaign this year, was at the front of voters’ minds across the country. But a series of battleground states were likely to decide the election, awarding their electoral votes and helping either Romney or Obama amass the 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.
Obama was set to have dinner with the first family at their home in south Chicago, while Romney joined his family at a hotel suite near his election night party in Boston. The president spent the day doing a series of interviews and participating in a pick-up game of basketball, an Election Day tradition for Obama.
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney talks to reporters on his campaign plane en route to Boston, Mass.,to await the result of the presidential election November 6, 2012.
Romney, meanwhile, added some last-minute campaigning to his schedule instead of enjoying down time. He stopped in Cleveland and Pittsburgh in a last-minute bid for votes in the crucial battleground state of Ohio.
Speaking to reporters traveling with him from Pittsburgh to Boston, Romney said he sensed that victory was on the horizon.
“You know, intellectually, I've felt we're going to win this and have felt that for some time,” Romney told reporters traveling with him from his last campaign stop from Pittsburgh back to Massachusetts. “But emotionally, just getting off the plane and seeing those people standing there … just seeing people there cheering as they were connected emotionally with me and I not only think we’re going to win intellectually, I feel it as well.”
Reuters, Getty ImagesIn the final push in the 2012 presidential election, candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama make their last appeals to voters.
Both candidates could know their fate in just a few hours, as vote totals and additional exit poll data paints a bigger picture of the American electorate this Election Day.
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