In voting booths in every corner of the land, the people were collectively writing the ending to a political saga that has been unfolding for nearly two years, during a tumultuous, uncertain period of American history in which record numbers of people expressed concerns that the country was heading down the wrong track.

Voters began lining up before dawn at polling locations up and down the East Coast, in what election officials said was an unusually large turnout. Some voters waited for as long as an hour in Virginia and others stood in lines that stretched out the door at polling stations in Cleveland. Yogi Preschel, 54, used his 45-minute wait to vote on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to drink a cup of coffee and shave with a battery-powered razor.

Some voting experts and campaign aides predicted that there would be a record turnout of some 130 million voters, which would be the highest percentage turnout in a century, and would shatter the previous record of 123.5 million people who cast ballots four years ago.

By noon on Tuesday some precincts in Chester County, Pa., were reporting that up to half of their registered voters had already cast ballots, said Agnes L. O’Toole, the county’s deputy director of voter services. She said that voters waited in lines that lasted up to two hours. “This is above and beyond an anomaly,” Ms. O’Toole said. “Our phones are off the wall.”

The candidates, exhausted after finishing the marathon election season with some last minute sprints of campaigning, all voted in the morning.

Mr. Obama cast his ballot at the Beulah Shoesmith Elementary School in Chicago with his wife, Michelle, and daughters Sasha and Malia, at 7:36 a.m. local time. “I noticed that Michelle took a long time though,” he said afterwards. “I had to check to see who she was voting for.”

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