Barack Obama came up a big winner in the presidential race in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, where the US's first Election Day votes have been cast and counted.

The Democrat candidate for the White House defeated Republican John McCain 15-6. Independent Ralph Nader was also on the ballot, but received no votes.

The first voter, following a tradition established in 1948, was picked ahead of the midnight voting and the rest of the town's registered voters followed suit in the first minutes of Tuesday.

Town Clerk Rick Erwin said the northern New Hampshire town was proud of its tradition, but said the most important thing was that the turnout represented a 100% vote.

President George Bush won the vote in Dixville Notch in 2004 on the way to his re-election.

Later, millions of Americans joined long queues around the country as they prepared to vote for a new era in US politics. A record high turnout of 130 million people were expected to vote for the 44th president of the United States, with 30 million having already cast their ballots.

Front runner Obama, who appeared to wipe tears from his cheeks on the campaign trail on Monday following the death of his grandmother, joined the nation's earliest voters in Chicago. Mr McCain later cast his ballot at a church near his home in Phoenix, Arizona.

Separately, Fidel Castro praised Barack Obama as smarter and less warlike than John McCain, but stopped short of endorsing either US presidential candidate. Cuba's former president said he delayed weighing in until the US election day so that "no one would have time to say I wrote something that could be utilised by the candidates in their campaigns."

"Without a doubt, Obama is more intelligent, cultured and level-headed than his Republican adversary," Mr Castro, 82, wrote in state-controlled newspapers. "McCain is old, bellicose, uncultured, of little intelligence and not healthy."