Voters in Joe the Plumber's Hometown Have Their Say

Long lines of enthusiastic voters queued in the pre-dawn gloom to cast their ballots in the hometown of Joe the Plumber, the Ohio tradesman who became a talismanic figure in America's bitterly fought election campaign.

Polls have given Barack Obama a slender lead of 2 to 3 percentage points in this bellweather state which has backed the winning candidate in every presidential election since 1960. Officials predict that turnout could exceed 80%.

Within 45 minutes of the ballot boxes opening at 6am, more than 70 people were waiting at a polling station at Holland's red brick Springfield high school, across a highway from a huge Wal-Mart superstore.

Mental health counselor Andrew Lesniewicz, 35, said he had backed Obama: "He seems to be more in touch with reality. McCain has this mentality of wanting to fight everyone. We don't need that anymore."

The working class town of Holland, on the outskirts of Toledo's industrial sprawl, was put on the political map last month when Samuel "Joe" Wurzelbacher, an out-of-work plumber, challenged Obama about his tax plans in a suburban street, complaining that a policy of raising levies on those earnings more than $250,000 would hit small business owners.

Wurzelbacher, 34, quickly became a Republican hero, joining John McCain on the campaign trail, and his image adorns t-shirts with slogans such as "no more drips in the White House". But his antics have attracted a lukewarm reception from some of his neighbors.

"I feel like Joe the Plumber has a lot in common with Sarah Palin," said Angela Zimmann, a university teacher casting her vote in Holland. "He's someone who is not necessarily educated for a position or experienced, but who says something that the Republicans can grab hold of."

Others were more sympathetic. Shelly Lynch, a petrol station clerk who knows Wurzelbacher as a customer, said: "I understand where he's coming from. Obama's plans are going to make things impossible for small business owners."

A 39-year-old mother of three, Lynch voted Republican: "I'm just really afraid of what will happen if Obama gets in. He's making a lot of promises I'm not sure he can uphold."

A low-rise collection of strip malls and leafy streets lined with bungalows, Holland is surrounded by cornfields and is under the final approach to Toledo's regional airport. Among the biggest employers is a Jeep factory where parent company Chrysler is axing one of two shifts at the end of the year, cutting 825 jobs as a downturn in the motor industry bites.

Mike DeShetler, who works at the Jeep plant, said he had little time for the low tax philosophy espoused by McCain and by Wurzelbacher. "Joe the Plumber should have kept his mouth shut," says DeShetler, a father of three who is voting for Obama. "We've lost all our manufacturing jobs because of free trade. The trickle down effect is not working here."

DeShetler continued: "There are no plumbers I know of who make $250,000. And if he does, he should be reinvesting it in his business and then he wouldn't be paying any more tax."

Four years ago, President Bush won Ohio by a wafer-thin margin of 118,000 out of 5.6 million votes cast. Irregularities at polling stations prompted accusations by Democrats of stolen votes. This year, it is the Republicans who are complaining of invalid names on the voting register and there are fears that a close result could spark an avalanche of litigation.

George Sarantou, a Republican councilman on Toledo's city authority, spent the morning standing outside Holland's polling station with a sign backing Barbara Sears, a candidate for Ohio's state legislature.

"I'm excited that we're going to have such a huge turnout of people," said Sarantou who insisted, with a smile, that McCain would be the president. "I think it's going to be very close but I think John will pull it off. It's going to be an upset similar to 1948."