Experts: Voter turnout could be 'unprecedented'

— -- Americans cast votes by the millions Tuesday on their way to new benchmarks in an election that's already making history.

Voting experts say they expect record turnout among blacks and possibly people under 30. They also say the country could surpass the high-water mark set in 1960, when Democrat John Kennedy faced Republican Richard Nixon and nearly 64% of eligible citizens voted.

"I could imagine us getting up there into the high 60s, to an unprecedented high," said Donald Green, director of Yale's Institution for Social and Policy Studies.

Curtis Gans, head of American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate, said voters haven't been so massively dissatisfied with their president, the direction of the country and the state of the economy since 1932. That mood is driving turnout, he said, as are "strong affirmative feelings" about Democrat Barack Obama and his extensive get-out-the-vote operation.

More than half of voters in Colorado and Nevada had voted by Election Day, as had about 40% of Florida voters. States that did not have widespread early voting, such as Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Virginia, reported long lines.

Robert Ware, 63, an election monitor with the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners, visited six polling places by 10 a.m. and found more people in line than in 2000 and 2004 combined. The shortest line had 200 people. "The past election was a trade wind blowing," he said. "This feels like a hurricane."

Whether or not turnout percentage records are shattered, a record number of people will have voted by day's end, and they will be the most representative electorate in U.S. history. Before 1920, women could not vote. Before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, blacks were officially "eligible," but most in the South were kept from registering. Before 1972, people ages 18 to 20 could not vote.

At polling stations across the country, voters said they were concerned about jobs and health care, moral values and experience. Many were first-time voters drawn to the polls by the sour economy and Obama's historic candidacy.