After months of intense campaigning, millions of Americans are voting Tuesday to determine who will lead the United States.

But with only hours left before polls close, U.S. President Barack Obama is still locked in a tight race for the White House with Republican challenger Mitt Romney, according to presidential polls.

President Barack Obama arrived in Chicago at 1 a.m. CST Tuesday and made a quick stop at the lakefront before heading on to his home in the Kenwood neighborhood on Chicago's south side. The 51-year-old former Chicago University law professor spent Tuesday morning in his neighborhood making calls to voters in the battleground state of Wisconsin, and then played a pickup basketball game with friends, organized by former aide Reggie Love, who played at Duke University. The game has become an election day ritual of sorts for Obama.

“We made the mistake of not playing basketball once," said former White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, according to the Washington Post. Gibbs, who was traveling with the Obama campaign on its final day, was referring to the campaign's loss to Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire during the 2008 primaries. “We won’t make that mistake again.”

Obama later will be camped out at Chicago's Fairmont Hotel, watching the results come in, and finally make his way to the McCormick Place convention center to join a few thousand of his supporters. Unlike 2008, where the election night festivities were held at Grant Park with upwards of 240,000 attendees, the 2012 election festivities for the Obama campaign will be much more low-key. McCormick Place is indoors and the Obama campaign has limited those invited to dedicated volunteers in the campaign.

Though five recent polls show the president with a slight advantage, it is still a statistical dead heat; two polls are showing a full 10-point swing -- that is, a 5-point lead for the incumbent in one poll and for the Republican nominee in the other.

Real Clear Politics’ average of national polls show that Obama has a small lead over Romney, 47.8 percent to 47.4 percent.

A look at each of the most recent individual polls in the RCP survey shows voters in five polls favoring Obama, and two polls have voters giving Romney the win, while three polls indicate a tie. According to those polls, it is anyone’s race at this point.

By The Numbers

Rasmussen Reports has Obama trailing by 1 percentage point, 48, to 49. CNN has both the challenger and incumbent locked at 49 percent. It is a 3-percentage-point advantage for Obama in the Pew Research survey, showing 50 percent to 47 percent.

Politico also has both men neck and neck at 48 percent. In the NBC poll, Obama is up one, 48 percent to Romney’s 47. The CBS News poll turned out similar results to NBC’s.

ABC News is reporting 49 percent for Obama to Romney’s 48 percent. In the Fox News poll, the two rivals are at 46 percent each.

The most interesting of all the recent presidential polls are the National Journal and Gallup polls, where each man has a 5-point lead over the other. By the Journal’s account, Obama is riding high at 50 percent among likely voters. For Gallup, it is Romney taking the lead, 51 percent.

A Divided America

Everything is at stake in the Tuesday's election.

The country is divided among two able nominees who have different views on some of the top issues of the 2012 election: economy and jobs, gender issues (including reproductive health and equal pay for equal work), health care (with Romney vowing to repeal Obamacare) and immigration.

Even race is a dividing factor. Some surveys, like the CNN poll, have Romney leading Obama 57 percent to 40 percent among white voters. Obama is doing much better than Romney among voters making less than $50,000 per year. However, Romney is doing much better with those making more than $50,000 per year. He is also beating the incumbent among male voters.

There is also some geographical divide with those in the Northeast, Midwest and urban areas favoring Obama, while Romney secures the advantage in the South, West and suburban and rural areas.