As of Wednesday morning, they were still counting provisional ballots in Ohio, the last state to return complete results due to long lines at the polls.ﾠ But Bush’s lead in the battleground state appears to exceed the number of uncountedﾠ provisional ballots, making it mathmatically impossible for Kerry to catch up. It is not clear when the official final results for Ohio will be announced.
Mr. Bush has also won the popular vote by the largest margin in recent history. Bush, who lost the popular vote to Vice President Al Gore in 2000, led Kerry by 3.6 million votes, or 51 percent to 48 percent. Nevertheless, the final Electoral College outcome remained unclear amid a dispute over Ohio ballots.
The potential for a prolonged ballot battle in Ohio recalled the 2000 election, which was decided in Bush’s favor only after a 36-day recount battle and a U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Also, technical difficulties in Iowa, which was also too close to call, made it unlikely that the Hawkeye State would decisively complete its tally until later Wednesday.
The race, which has featured nearly seven months of intense campaigning since Kerry vanquished his Democratic primary rivals this spring, has been remarkably and consistently tight. Bush and Kerry have traded small leads over the course of the race, but they entered Election Day with most surveys showing a statistical tie nationwide and in several key battleground states.
Turnout was heavy in many states.
The hard-fought and often bitter race was dominated by sharp disagreements over Bush’s handling of Iraq and its place in the broader war against terrorism. Iraq and the economy consistently topped surveys as the top concerns of voters.
The candidates consistently painted starkly different pictures of the economy. In Kerry’s version, the president is a failed economic steward who favored tax cuts for wealthy benefactors, jeopardizing the nation’s long-term fiscal outlook while doing little to create jobs, and leaving Bush to become the first president since Herbert Hoover to see a net loss of jobs.
In Bush’s version, the president moved quickly to enact tax cuts that helped spur the economy in the wake of the 2001 recession, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and a sharp decline in the stock market.
