But the Kerry campaign did not concede defeat. “We will fight for every vote,” vice presidential candidate John Edwards told a crowd in Boston. “We’ve waited four years for this victory. We can wait one more night.”

With disputes over provisional ballots and a margin of just over 100,000 with 93% of precincts reporting, Ohio, at least for now, looks to become the legal battleground Florida was four years ago. Lawyers from both parties were poised Tuesday night to descend on the state.
But many observers remained skeptical of Kerry’s chances.

“This is not like Florida last time, when there was a margin of 600 votes that could be contested,” said David Karol, professor of political science at U.C. Berkeley. “There are provisional ballots in Ohio, but they’re not all Democratic votes and Bush has a lead of 100,000 votes. Even if there are irregularities in Ohio, you have to convince people that they can make a difference and I think that’s a very tough sell.”

Americans, apparently in numbers exceeding recent elections, stood in long lines to cast their votes today while armies of lawyers kept watch for complaints of fraudulent registration, faulty voting machines and other irregularities.

Yet while some voters experienced difficulties, the scene at polls across the country was largely calm. The widespread malfunctioning of machines and intimidation of voters at polling places that had been feared did not materialize. However, isolated incidents cropped up in precincts from New York to California and nearly everywhere in between.

In Pennsylvania Republicans convinced a federal court to prevent absentee ballots from being counted before Friday. In Florida some voters never received their absentee ballots and then had problems when they tried to vote at the polls. Voters in New Mexico and Nevada complained that they were receiving phone calls telling to them to go to the wrong polling places.

In Iowa, mechanical problems and fatigue prompted the Secretary of State to carry counting votes over to Wednesday.

The Election Incident Reporting System, a national hotline set up to record voter complaints including fraud and intimidation, reported over 16,000 incidents.

The Ohio Supreme Court earlier on Tuesday declined to hear an appeal of a lower court decision allowing vote challengers in the state’s polling places, leaving the way clear for Republicans who had planned to challenge voters in several precincts. But most of the challenges never materialized, with most Republican activists instead observing polls from a distance and not interfering with voters.

Anecdotal evidence of long lines and crowded precincts suggested heavy turnout, which had been expected to benefit Kerry. U.C. Berkeley Professor of Political Science Laura Stoker, however, said that turnout was lower than expected. She estimated turnout as somewhere between 110 and 120 million voters, or between 53.5 and 57 percent of the voting population. The comparable figure for 2000 was 105 million, or 51 percent.

“A lot of it is mobilization and a lot of it is interest in a race that’s close. But an enormous amount of money has been spent on mobilization,” said Stoker.

The youth vote never emerged in the numbers expected. Exit polls indicated that fewer than one in ten percent of the electorate was 18 to 24, about the same as in 2000. With the total vote up, however, more total young voters went to the polls.

18-29 year-olds voted overwhelmingly for Kerry, 56 to 42 percent according to exit polls, while in 2000 that population split their votes more evenly between Bush and Gore.

While both parties vied for the female vote, Kerry was able to count on the support of women, and Bush made little headway in the African-American population, which voted 90 percent to 10 percent for Kerry. However, Bush kept the support of his base of born again and evangelical Christians, which supported the president 76 to 23 percent.

On their last day of campaigning Monday, Bush and Kerry crisscrossed the swing states, making 11 stops between them and nearly crossing paths in Milwaukee. Bush began his day today at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he voted. He returned to the White House to watch the election results, with one last stop in Ohio on the way, where he called a supporter to say, “I'm proud to have your support. I appreciate you taking my phone call. Thank you so very much."

Kerry woke up in Wisconsin and returned early this morning to Boston, where he spent Election Day.

"I've fought hard, did what I had to do," Kerry told the New York Times late Tuesday evening.

A Polarized Electorate and a Frenzied Campaign

Though Kerry tried at several points during the long campaign to shift the debate to domestic issues, the focus has remained on national security and the war in Iraq. Mounting U.S. casualties, gruesome beheadings, and U.S. inspectors’ failure to find weapons of mass destruction have transformed today’s election into something of a referendum on Bush’s Iraq policy.

In the most recent twist, a new videotape surfaced last week of a healthy-looking Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It’s unclear what impact, if any, the bin Laden tape will have on the outcome of the election.

Despite the focus on international affairs, both candidates have promised to improve conditions in the United States, with Bush calling for the partial privatization of social security and education as a solution to the lack of jobs. Kerry has said he will staunch the flow of U.S. jobs to nations with cheaper labor, and pledged to reverse tax cuts for the richest Americans.

In the longest presidential campaign in U.S. history, Kerry sought to convince Americans that Bush has led the country astray, misleading the public in the run-up to the Iraq war and answering to corporations and the very rich rather than the average American.

Bush, meanwhile, attacked Kerry as a “flip-flopper” on key issues, presenting himself as a strong leader unyieldingly hunting down terrorists. He said his tax cuts were beginning to improve the nation’s economy, which has been suffering since the 9/11 attacks.

In his acceptance speech at July’s Democratic convention, Kerry evoked his military experience and took another jab at Bush’s Texas National Guard service by declaring he was “reporting for duty.” Shortly after the convention the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group of Vietnam veterans with ties to the Bush campaign, aired the first of several controversial ads disparaging Kerry’s war record.

Both candidates suffered image problems throughout the campaign. In mid-September, a debacle ensued over Bush’s Texas National Guard service when CBS News relied on forged documents to suggest that Bush received special treatment surrounding his assignment and discharge from service.

Kerry fought throughout his campaign to loosen up and appeal to swing voters, having been characterized in the press as stiff, unapproachable, and out of touch with ordinary Americans. His daughters helped get his name out to younger voters, while a swarm of A-list celebrities like Bruce Springsteen and Ben Affleck used their star power to increase attention to his campaign. Former President and Democratic Party darling Bill Clinton joined Kerry on his road tour, just weeks after undergoing heart surgery.

Unprecedented Fundraising

Through the use of groups like MoveOn, known as 527 groups, more money was spent on this year’s presidential election than any previous race. The controversial, tax-exempt groups -- which some say flout the spirit of recent campaign finance reform -- can accept unlimited donations and received donations from super-rich donors.

Early on, groups supporting Democrats gained the vast majority of 527 money, but toward the end of the campaign Republican-backing 527s began to catch up. Much of those groups effectively did the work of political parties, including running vicious attack ads and get-out-the-vote organizing.

The Nader Factor

Ralph Nader’s independent candidacy proved to be much less of a factor than in 2000. With liberals lining up behind Kerry, Nader pulled one percent or less in most states where he was on the ballot, while in 2000 he averaged around three percent of the electorate. In Ohio Nader did not appear on the ballot and therefore will not be a factor in the outcome of this key state.

This story was reported by Alexandra Berzon, Tomio Geron, Marjorie McAfee, Felicia Mello, Claire Miller, Aliza Nadi, Emilia Pablo, Shlomi Simhi, Sandhya Somashekhar, Timothy Wheeler.
Updated 11/3/04 12:04 AM