Bush Likely to Have Been Re-elected

Incumbent U.S. President George W. Bush is projected to have won the U.S. presidential election that took place on November 2.

However, as Democratic Party candidate John Kerry has not conceded his alleged defeat in Ohio, one of the fiercest battlefields, and plans to take the case to the court. It will take a considerable amount of time until the final result of the election is announced. The Democratic Party raised objection over the votes in Florida.

President Bush won in 27 states including Florida, securing 249 electoral votes as of 3:40 a.m., November 3 EST. Bush is leading Kerry by 144,000 votes in Ohio, worth 20 electoral votes.

Kerry won in 18 states, including New York and California, and in Washington D.C., and has 242 electoral votes. Ballot counting is still in process in five states including Nevada and New Mexico.

The Associated Press (AP) reported that Bush won in Ohio, but other media outlets such as CNN are being more cautious and serious, saying that “Ohio is too close to call.”

If Bush wins in Ohio, adding up to 269 total votes, he only needs to win in one more state whose results have not been revealed yet. Two hundred seventy electoral votes is the minimum number necessary to secure the next presidency.

"We`ve waited four years for this victory, we can wait one more night," Edwards said around 2:30 a.m. EST at the Democratic Party campaign headquarters in Boston. "John Kerry and I made a promise to the American people that with this election, every vote would count and every vote would be counted."

Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell said that by Ohio’s state law, the provisional and absentee ballots will not be counted until 11 days after the election. This could lead to the second Florida incident. Blackwell said that the number of provisional ballots in the state could be as high as 250,000. Blackwell added that many soldiers participated in the provisional and absentee ballots overseas.

As of 3:10 a.m. EST, with 91 percent of the votes counted, Bush had obtained 54.9 million votes, 51 percent of the popular votes, three percent more than Kerry, who won 51.2 million votes, 48 percent of the total.

Meanwhile, the consumer advocate-turned-presidential candidate Ralph Nader won 373,400 votes in total.

In the Congressional election that reshuffled 34 seats, one-third of the total, in the Senate and the House of Representatives, the Grand Old Party (GOP) confirmed its control. The Republicans added one more seat in the Senate, and they now have 52 seats. In the House of Representatives, the Republicans secured five more seats, and expanded their majority with 226 seats.