The deal with ohio is that there are somewhere around 200K provisional ballots, and if the numbers stay like they are, or obviously if they get close, the provisionals will have to be reviewed and then, if allowed, counted. Bush is behind in the other states that would give him an alternate path to victory, so it may come down to Ohio, and only Ohio, deciding the election.

He didn't seem too upset. He basically said that he agreed the Dems needed a good ass whooping to rethink things.

That being said, looking at the numbers in Ohio, I don't see how Kerry makes up anything, there are a few counties with not too many precints reporting where Bus his waxing him.

The popular vote is real close but early returns in California show it is alot closer than many expected. I think Bush will take the popular vote.

Bush has to take Ohio AND New Mexico (both currently leaning his way) to win.

Exactly, I couldn't remember how many provisionals they said were handed out or if they were included in current totals or not...

I'm a Bush suppoprter, but my worst case scenario is, no matter who wins, a long drawn out court battle. No matter who wins, I hope the other bows out and says the best man won - for the country's sake.

Bush should take Nevada. I do no think he will lose there.I aslo think he will take New Mexico. However, it looks like Ohio will decide the election. Last count I heard there was 800,000 uncounted for in Ohio with Bush holding +180,000.

*cackles* you put the words "best man" and "wins" in the same sentence......



*CACKLES*


Sorry, but the very idea that either of these two nether-regions of a diseased yak is the best man for anything is hilarious.


I apologize for this interruption of our national corruption, we now return you to your regular 4 year frustration....

well currently bush is down in nevada and up in new mexico.

there's also the provisional ballots in ohio too...

Fox news just called Ohio for Bush!

If Ohio's number stay similar to they are now through the night and Bush's percent hold true through all the precincts, even with 200K provisional ballots Kerry would need around 130-150K of those, or over 65% to have a chance. There are still precincts open where Bush has a good lead, that overall almost cancel any gains Kerry will make through the night.

Kerry gets Oregon.

CNN has it 246-195 for Bush. 97 votes left.

EVERYTHING is relative, Render. :D

He is down by 5,000 in Nevada, the slimest of margins. If Fox News is right, this thing is all but over.

would you expect anything different? if it gets called by anyone else than maybe.

No, he doesn't. He takes Ohio and Alaska, he gets to 269. That's a tie, that's decided by the House. The Republicans hold the house.

Fox News just called Ohio.

Provisional ballots and court cases aside, this election is now over.

again, when someone else calls ohio then it's over.

I have a feeling the Dems will not let Ohio go so easily.

Funny, because Fox News has actually been pretty cautious is calling states until the last hour or so. Now they've decided to scoop everyone and essentially give Bush the election.

I can't believe that Fox was the first to call Ohio because they were the last to call Florida. CBS has been the network that has called everything early and I doubt they'd call Ohio anytime tonight since Rather is an obviously anti-Bush.

Yeah, FoxNews was the only station that was sticking to the agreement of letting the AP call the states until now. Because this is the big one. If it's true and the lawyers in fact have run out of free cigarettes to give to returning voters in Cleveland....then Bush has basically won!

My guess is Kerry gains 15-20K in Ohio by the time the normal counting is done tonight.

dola

Ksyrup beat me to it.

MSNBC is saying both parties are saying it's going to be razor thin close

They won't, but even if they have 200,000 provisional ballots undecided, they'd have to assume Kerry would take 135,000+ of those. Possible, sure, but it's not likely.

It looks like Bush is going to get Ohio, New Mexico and Alaska.

Still haven't got 100% of Ohio in, but it's looking like it's going to be difficult to get this.

Alaska is Bush's no problem.


Remember that the provisionals are from where all the lines are, in the heavy dem areas (cleveland) as far as I know. He's pulling near 2/3 in the county...

90% of Cuyahoga in, Bush still up by 100K

Over says Brokaw

CNN roundtable pretty much giving it to Bush at this point...

NBC just gave Ohio. It's OVA!!!

so say it stays at 100k (even tho it has been going down)

with 200k he only needs 50.000001% of the provisionals to take the state.



Ohio has been given to Bush by MSNBC so it's time to go to sleep but with the numbers continually dropping who knows...

Done and done

CNN calls AK for Bush.

Bush gets Alaska... Kerry needs a sweep. And that split vote in Maine or something. Come on Bush/Edwards ticket.

FOX NEWS:

BUSH 269
KERRY 211

God is Great God Is Great.

Dola: Bush Edwards ? Dear God what would the campaign slogan be.

Somewhere Hillary Clinton is smiling.

We have 20 year old daughters?

Congrats to Bush. He's not the guy I backed, but I offer him the same prayer I would offer Kerry.

"After a time of great division, may you have the wisdom and greatness of spirit to bring our nation together and to preside honestly, ably, and to the best of your ability."

Here is the problem Chubby. . .

There might be 200k provisional ballots, but that doesn't mean they all get counted. They have to all be looked at and looked over. What's more, is the margain is about 120,000 with 89% in. If that doesn't close, that means Kerry needs 60+% of them to get the win.

It's bleak. No other way to look at it.

Now Let's get on to healing a nation divided.

No chance. In addition to Bush winning, the Reps have taken a number of Senate seats and would have control over both the House (who would pick President) and Senate (who would pick VP). If it's a tie, it's still over.

Bush has now taken the lead in Iowa, with 89% of the precincts reporting...

That worked so well 4 years ago...

SI

It's a darn shame. We could have started healing a divided world as well.

Does this mean George won't be baseball Commish?

*chuckles*:rolleyes:

France, Germany, and Russia just breathed a sigh of relief. ("Whew, looks like we don't have to get off our asses after all!")

Trust me, they are very content with the result. They get to keep bashing America and they get to leave America to do the dirty work of fighting the bad guys by ourselves.

Boy if New Mexico stays as it is right now and Bush wins it. Gov. Richardson should get a pie in the face. He came on Fox earlier and all but guaranteed that NM would go to Kerry. Oops.

We're fighting Bin Laden? Thats right, we quit that for a war people could see.

Its funny, but if Bush stayed on task, there would have been no doubt that he cruises this election. Whever told him Iraq was a good idea deserves to be fired.

I know what you are saying, but if we spent 3 years searching the mountains of Afghanistan for Bin Laden (who could very well be in Bangladesh for all we know) and we let Saddam Hussein keep the status quo, I can promise you Kerry would have had an argument for that too.

I'm sure you can agree that Kerry has to be disagreeable with any choice Bush made.

It's deja vu all over again...Kery campaign disputes Ohio call.

Now, I just saw the Ohio Elections Supervisor say that his best estimate is that there are 150K provisionals. Combined with what's left of the regular votes, I'm fine with waiting until 100% report, but I don't see Kerry coming up with what they need to overcome the lead.

I'm going to read this thread again from start to finish so I can enjoy the progression :D

Kerry cries foul in Ohio!!!!

Wouldn't it make sense for the Dems to just congratulate GW if Ohio does end up going to GW? It just looks bad IMO and would turn 50/50 voters off to their party. I know if I was an undecided I would think to myself "here we go again, the Dems just can't let it go, they'll just drag the loss out for weeks and weeks just like in 2000". That would turn me off to vote for them in the next election. Just my 2 cents.

I'd call New Mexico by now. Bernadillo County is hardly a stronghold for the Democrats, and a large number of the remaining votes are from there.

No point in holding out hope in Ohio. So many uncounted votes left in Cincinnati as compared to Cleveland.

This guy from Ohio is saying that they won't start counting provisionals until 11 days after the election per state law.

Once again, we'll be waiting for a couple of weeks or longer for a final decision.

Looks like Iowa might be called soon for Bush as well.

Tell that to the Kerry camp. They seem to have dug their heels in. Maybe they'll change their tune once 100% of the votes are in, but I doubt it.

Gotta love Rather. "We understand that other networks have called Ohio for Bush, but this isn't a race. We want to make sure that we are 100% sure before we give it to Bush. We don't mind if we are the last to make the call". Too bad they were calling states earlier like madmen before any other network and now they stop all of sudden. Stop flip-flopping Dan. You want Bush to lose and you just can't bear to see it not happening.

Amazingly, I gotta say CNN has been doing excellent all night.

Ditto, I think this it's over. I could be surprised in a day or two, but I can't see how Kerry pulls it off now. 150K and he's down over 100K right now. If that holds, he'd need over 68% of those ballots to be in his favor. This, in a state that's split 51-49. Good luck with that one.

It also looks like a near certainty that he'll also win the popular vote. Sorry, Mr. Kerry, I think this thing is over.

CNN is saying Kerry is readying lawyers in Ohio and Iowa. It ain't over, even though it's over.

Are you kidding? I watched about 30 minutes of there coverage and they are constanly messing up with different states. It is been pretty bad.

The Ohio website only lists 36,000 provisional voters in Ohio.

Bush claims that there are only 120,000 provinsional votes.
Kerry claims there are 250,000 provisional votes.


Should be a fun 11 days :D

The website has been pretty good.

They haven't jumped the gun on going 'official' with any states. Now, a case could be argued that they're just being slow to keep people glued, but regardless, the fact that they aren't trigger happy with calling winners is good enough for me.

Edit: And I've been mostly watching the website rather than the broadcast, though I occaisonally head to the other room to watch on the Uber TV (tm)

Was just about to post this. Gonna be fucking sick if it goes down like that.

You know, while I do care who wins, I care more about whoever losing not being a bitch.

The gap keeps growing. It's now almost 125K unlike before when it was around 100k.

This election, much like the Big 10 most years, will come down to Ohio and Michigan

Michigan is a non factor at this point.

I know this sounds odd but the black guy who is doing the commentary on CNN (I keep missing his name- anyone want to give me some help on that), his pitch and timbre sounded just like that of Bill Walton. I was looking at my computer and had it on in the background and I swore I was listening to that nightmare of an announcer doing politics: "Ohio is the BIGGEST state in the HISTORY of the Electoral College" (ok, he didn't say that but it sounds like something Bill Walton would say).

SI

Basically but I was looking for some umpth. We're just hanging around out there, twidling our fingers. It's boring.

We did have a fight counting votes at least.

Now I hear that John Henry's plane is being readied for the Kerry lawyers. Talk about blowing the nation's (or at half of its) goodwill toward the Red Sox!

I am wondering if NBC or Fox will be the first to declare a winner.

http://election.sos.state.oh.us/ProvBallots.htm

I am sure these numbers are off, but I find it difficult to see how CNN is specualting that there may be as many 500,000 provisional votes.

Technically, they both already have, since a tie is a Bush win.

Has anyone seen updated Hawaii numbers? All of the networks seem to be showing the same 0% reporting, 69K to 55K Kerry lead. Very odd.

And the Ohio lead grows more. :D

Or, who will be the first network to Officially take Ohio off the table.

Ok, I may be missing something since no one else has mentioned this but isn't this wrong?

If Bush leads by 100k votes, Kerry has to get 100k MORE of the provisionals than Bush not merely 100k of the provisionals. If he wins 50.000001% of the 200k unless all the others are for third party candidates he still loses. Right?

Cheney!! FOILED AGAIN!! (He went to Hawaii for a reason....clearly it was to screw up their election process. :) )

You are right Axxon.

Yeah, he'd need a 75-25 split (150K to 50K).

SI

"Introducing the next VP of the US..." That's funny.

Again, lets say he wins 70% of the provisionals. That's 105k votes in this scenario. Bush would get 45k. Kerry still loses. True your statement is technically true but he needs a lot more than 68%.

Let's see here ... Ohio:
Still more than half the precincts out in Ashland County (currently 64% Bush)
Still 26% of precincts out in Clermont County (currently 71% Bush)
49% of precincts in Coshoction County (currently 56% Bush)
22% of Hamilton County (currently 53% Bush)
2% of Knox County (currently 66% Bush)
5% of Lucas County (currently 60% Kerry)

Somebody got a meat thermometer? I think Ohio might be done.

Maybe not. If Kerry can pull in 200% of the provisionals we still have a race.

I didn't realize Cleveland was in Cook County.

SI

Time to go to sleep. Popular vote is now approaching a 4 million difference. I think it's over.

They keep championing this argument on CNN. But, really, as long as we have the Electoral College, I fail to see how this is relevant. Sounds like Gore in 2000 beating the "popular vote" drum when it's unimportant.

SI

WaitAMinute ! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

I think I'm gonna crash too actually. Nothing I can do to speed the process nor change any votes already cast thousands of miles away ... and we'll still be looking at the steady stream of lawyers heading to Ohio in the morning.

Kerry and Edwards risk some longtime fallout with this strategy. So far, the networks are cooperating by assuming hanky-panky with the vote reporting in New Mexico. And some of them by not calling Ohio itself.

At some point, they need to assess the provisionals (because there's no way they're getting anything but a slightly bigger deficit with the live vote tally) and decide if there's even a tiny chance they will win based on a fair counting.

What's going to happen when these provisionals are assessed is that people are start checking into each vote, and they're going to find dead people, houses with 100 residents, fictional people, etc... and the Republicans are going to have a field day with it. Meanwhile, mathematically, it's still not going to help Kerry all that much.

The result: people across the country are going to see the Democrats as whiners who can't accept even a fair election. So much has already been made of the bizarre ACORN practices when registering voters.

Once Kerry and his team have assessed what really happened with the vote, they need to make a good decision on this. Edwards' assertion that they will "fight" for every vote has me worried that they may tilt at windmills and draw this out for weeks unnecessarily.

Whatever happens in Ohio I just want it to end. I hope it's not close. The last thing we need is another month of talking heads and lawyers. I'm tired of hearing people bitching in the grocery line.

BTW, just checked through Iowa, and it seems dead certain in the Bush column. The networks are being a little silly not calling it. Lee County may be worth as much as 3,000 votes for Kerry and looks a bit unfinished despite the 100% claim, but everything else is likely to produce Bush votes, if anything. So the 13,000-vote seems very safe.

If they call either Iowa, or New Mexico, or Nevada for Bush and also have called Ohio...that means he crosses the threshold of 269, and viewers drop out.

Just an interesting tidbit that hasn't been picked up by the media:

Ohio (99% in):

Bush - 2,764,809 - 51%
Kerry - 2,620,594 - 48%

Pennsylvania (99% in):

Kerry - 2,848,193 - 51%
Bush - 2,717,493 - 49%


These are essentially the same situation statistically (Penn is actually closer), yet CNN and some of the networks are unwilling to call Ohio for Bush and Kerry may be setting up all these challenges. Meanwhile, Penn was called for Kerry hours before and there is no mention of any challenges (or illegitimacy) there.

OK, there's 100% of the precincts reporting in Nevada and Bush is up 51-48 (+20,500). I think they can call that for Bush now.

Checking Wisconsin, that's going to hold up for Kerry. His lead should increase a tiny bit, if anything.

To follow up on my above point, the gap in Pennsylvania is currently 2% (130,700) and the gap in Ohio is 3% (144,215). How can CNN have called Penn, but not Ohio?

Nevada finally called.