WASHINGTON -- As of 4:30 this morning, President George W. Bush may have already secured as many as 269 electoral votes, and appeared to be on the verge of a major victory.
His opponent, Democratic Sen. John Kerry, did not concede the election last night, leaving open the possibility of recounts and lawsuits. For the second straight presidential election, no candidate emerged clearly victorious on Election Night, and the popular vote was almost perfectly split.
The race appears to hinge on the outcome of the vote in Ohio, which has 20 electoral votes. At approximately 2 a.m., NBC networks declared Bush victorious in the state, but other networks were more cautious and declared the state too close to call.
Several other states, including Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Iowa remained undeclared at 4:30 a.m. If Bush wins Ohio and any of the undeclared states, he will have earned at least the requisite 270 electoral votes needed to win the election.
Neither Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney took to the stage at the Reagan Building in Washington last night to address the nation, even after the Kerry campaign said it would be challenging the results in Ohio, specifically related to provisional ballots.
Despite the nation's lack of certainty about who would emerge victorious, Bush supporters stumbled out of a private Republican party at the ESPN Zone in Washington elated early this morning.
"Kerry's done. He's a walking exhumed corpse with a motor mouth," Saint Joseph's senior Michael Russo said, adding that he thought Democrats would have won by a significant margin if Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) had been nominated.
At the time the party broke up, few in attendance expected questions over who won to persist through today.
"I think it's over [and] I think Kerry is going to be a gentleman and concede in style," Maryland resident and Republican Alex Buck said, noting his surprise that Kerry lost key states including Florida.
"I suppose people felt more comfortable with Bush carrying on fighting terrorism," Buck said. "People want a father figure for a president."
Other students at the party felt that the war on terrorism helped Bush win votes.
With the country in the middle of a war in Iraq, St. Joseph's University senior Dan Delgiudice feels that a change in leadership would be unwise.
"I'm ready for Bush to win again," said Delgiudice, a Republican. "Even if Kerry was perfect, when change occurs, problems happen. ... I'm not saying I love Bush. I just think he's better than Kerry. I'm voting for four more years."
Also adamant in his support for Bush, Russo noted his embarrassment that Pennsylvania's electoral votes went to Kerry.
"If it would've rained in Philadelphia," he lamented, citing the fact that bad weather frequently suppresses voter turnout. But "we won and that's all that matters," Russo said.
The Bush campaign did not do as well as expected in the swing state of Pennsylvania, which Kerry carried by a large margin yesterday, along with the state's 21 electoral votes. The president, however, performed particularly well in Florida, which the networks declared in his favor early in the evening.
