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Thursday's presidential and provincial elections were widely seen as a success with far less violence than expected, although officials said 11 election workers were killed in insurgent attacks.
Bomb blasts and rocket attacks across the country on election day also left 26 Afghan security forces and civilians dead.
Officials have called for calm ahead of definitive results next month as President Hamid Karzai declared a decisive win and his main rival, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, insisted that he was in fact ahead.
"This election was run by the Afghan people. In fact, it was the first democratic election run by Afghans in over three decades," said Obama, who stressed that his administration had not backed any particular candidate.
"Over the last few days, and particularly, yesterday, we've seen acts of violence and intimidation by the Taliban and there may be more in the days to come," Obama said.
"We knew that the Taliban would try to derail this election, yet even in the face of this brutality, millions of Afghans exercised the right to choose their leaders and determine their own destiny.
"As I watched the election, I was struck by their courage in the face of intimidation and their dignity in the face of disorder."
Afghan election officials said turnout was expected to be 40-50 percent, far below the 70 percent during the country's first presidential vote in 2004.
Taliban insurgents' strategy appeared to be to depress turnout. One foreign analyst said turnout may have been as low as 10 percent in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in the south.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said that such figures appeared "very low" and was not what US diplomats had heard.
"It's possible that there are isolated polling places that had those kind of figures but there were thousands of polling places," Kelly told reporters.
"I think we want to be very careful not to characterize the legitimacy ... of this election before we have all the data," he said.
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Bomb blasts and rocket attacks across the country on election day also left 26 Afghan security forces and civilians dead.
Officials have called for calm ahead of definitive results next month as President Hamid Karzai declared a decisive win and his main rival, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, insisted that he was in fact ahead.
"This election was run by the Afghan people. In fact, it was the first democratic election run by Afghans in over three decades," said Obama, who stressed that his administration had not backed any particular candidate.
"Over the last few days, and particularly, yesterday, we've seen acts of violence and intimidation by the Taliban and there may be more in the days to come," Obama said.
"We knew that the Taliban would try to derail this election, yet even in the face of this brutality, millions of Afghans exercised the right to choose their leaders and determine their own destiny.
"As I watched the election, I was struck by their courage in the face of intimidation and their dignity in the face of disorder."
Afghan election officials said turnout was expected to be 40-50 percent, far below the 70 percent during the country's first presidential vote in 2004.
Taliban insurgents' strategy appeared to be to depress turnout. One foreign analyst said turnout may have been as low as 10 percent in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in the south.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said that such figures appeared "very low" and was not what US diplomats had heard.
"It's possible that there are isolated polling places that had those kind of figures but there were thousands of polling places," Kelly told reporters.
"I think we want to be very careful not to characterize the legitimacy ... of this election before we have all the data," he said.
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