Not everyone has conceded Ohio to Bush
From Yahoo!/AP:
Bush Wins Florida; Ohio Too Close to Call
6 minutes ago Politics - AP
By RON FOURNIER, AP Political Writer
WASHINGTON - President Bush and challenger John Kerry sweated out a tension-packed conclusion to the race between an embattled incumbent and a Democrat who questioned the war he waged in Iraq. Ohio loomed as this year's Florida, the decisive state, with Kerry's options dwindling.
Votes Electoral Popular
Bush 249 51%
Kerry 221 48%
Bush won Florida, the state he nailed down four years ago only after a 36-day recount and Supreme Court decision. Kerry hung on to the Democratic prize of Pennsylvania, but had precious few places to pick up electoral votes that went Republican in 2000. He took New Hampshire from Bush, but it has only four electoral votes. That leaves just Ohio and Nevada....
The Electoral College count was excruciating: With 270 votes needed, Bush won 27 states for 249 votes. Kerry won 16 states plus the District of Columbia for 221 votes.
In the early hours of Wednesday, with several battleground states still unsettled, Kerry was still on the hunt for electoral votes the GOP won four years ago. The states won by Democrat Al Gore (news - web sites) in 2000 are worth just 260 votes this year due to redistricting — 10 short of the coveted number.
Kerry could pick that up plus some in Ohio with 20 electoral votes. Without the Buckeye state, he could only turn to Nevada (5 votes).
A 269-269 tie would throw the presidential race to the House....
Bush lost Pennsylvania, a major blow after courting voters with steel tariffs and 44 visits — the most of any state — in a bid to steal it from the Democrats. The loss raises the stakes in Florida and Ohio, both won by Bush in 2000....
Republicans moved toward increasing their majority in the Senate, winning Democratic seats in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Louisiana while Democrats took GOP-held seats in Colorado and Illinois. State Sen. Barack Obama won easily in Illinois; in January, he will be the third black U.S. senator since Reconstruction.
Republicans extended their decade-long hold on the House for another two years, knocking off four veteran Texas Democrats....
Braced for a replay of the 2000 recount, legions of lawyers and election-rights activists watched for signs of voter fraud or disenfranchisement. New lawsuits sought clearer standards to evaluate provisional ballots in Ohio and a longer deadline to count absentee ballots in Florida.
While complaints were widespread, they weren't significant. "So far, it's no big, but lots of littles," said elections expert Doug Chapin....
Bush won Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Kerry won California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and statewide in Maine. One Maine vote remained a tossup....
While neither candidate offered a specific exit strategy for Iraq, Kerry asserted that the election of a new president alone would persuade allies to take a greater share of the costs and sacrifices born by the United States.
The Democrats said he hoped to start withdrawing troops from Iraq in the first months of his presidency. Bush said such talk only encouraged terrorists....
Unabashedly conservative, Bush said he shared with voters the values of faith and family. Kerry said his faith and activities — hockey and hunting — put him in the mainstream, too.
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