An elated President Bush claimed victory in his bid for reelection this afternoon after a tumultuous night of vote counting and a gracious concession by challenger John F. Kerry, and reached across the political divide by pledging that he would seek to earn the support of those who did not back him during the long and contentious campaign.
Speaking directly to those who backed Kerry on Tuesday, Bush said, “To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust.”
An hour earlier, at Boston’s Faneuil Hall, Kerry formally ended his campaign after an overnight drama over whether to contest the vote count in the prized battleground of Ohio, telling his supporters at an emotional rally, ” We cannot win this election.”
Bush, speaking at the Ronald Reagan Building packed with jubilant supporters, said he was humbled by the popular and electoral vote victory that gave him the second term in office that was denied his father 12 years ago. “I’m proud to lead such an amazing country and I’m proud to lead it forward,” he said.
Bush touched on some of the challenges that face him in his second term, from stabilizing Iraq to waging the fight against terrorism to reforming the tax code and the Social Security system, and went to say, “Reaching these goals will require the broad support of Americans,” he said.
He was joined on the stage by his wife Laura, their twin daughters Jenna and Barbara, and Vice President Cheney and his family.
With Ohio in the president’s column, and New Mexico added to his haul later today, Bush claimed 279 electoral votes — nine more than the 270 needed for victory — with Iowa still too close to call. In contrast to 2000, Bush also won the popular vote, capturing 51 percent of ballots cast. Kerry won a close vote in Wisconsin, putting his electoral total at 252.
Bush will begin his second term with strengthened GOP majorities in the House and Senate. With GOP candidates picking up a string of Democratic open seats, Republicans saw their Senate strength grow from 51 to 55. But he also will face a country still badly divided, as the results on Tuesday showed.
In Boston, Kerry choked back tears, his voice breaking, as he called on his supporters to “begin the healing” after a grueling campaign that split the country along cultural and geographical lines.
The Massachusetts senator said he had pledged to the president in an 11 a.m. phone call to help bridge those divides. “We talked about the danger of division in our country and the need, the desperate need, for unity, for finding the common ground, coming together,” Kerry said.
Kerry was joined by his vice presidential running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, their spouses and families and a packed hall of campaign staffers and supporters, many of them in tears over a loss that many never dreamed possible as they heard the first wave of exit polls on Tuesday afternoon.
After the drama of Tuesday night’s counting, Bush aides were planning a victory announcement for this afternoon, but the Massachusetts senator’s decision not to prolong the vote counting brought a swift end to any possibility that the 2004 election would turn into a rerun of the disputed 2000 contest.
The battle for Ohio turned out to be a short, if emotional, roller coaster ride for the Democrats. Kerry aides originally believed there might be enough “provisional ballots” — ballots cast by individuals whose eligibility was in doubt — to win Ohio. After overnight analysis and a series of early morning meetings, Kerry and his advisers realized that the estimated 150,000 provisional ballots were not enough to overcome Bush’s current margin of 136,000 votes in Ohio, even if he were to win the lion’s share of them.
With many Democrats around the country urging Kerry to keep fighting, the candidate sought to reassure his loyalists that he would not have quit the race if he believed there were any chance of winning. “It is now clear that, even when all the provisional ballots are counted, which they will be, there won’t be enough outstanding votes for us to be able to win Ohio,” he said.
“In America, it is vital that every vote count and every vote be counted, but the outcome should be decided by voters and not by a protracted legal process,” Kerry added.
Kerry strategist Joe Lockhart said, “We wanted to wait and see and be as careful as we could about what the reality on the ground was. When we had a chance to do that, I think we made the judgment that the time was right for John Kerry to call the president and concede.”
Bush’s advisers were convinced hours earlier that there was no way Kerry could win. At about 5:40 a.m., as the Kerry campaign weighed its options, White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. went to the Reagan Building to tell supporters, “We are convinced that President Bush has won reelection.” He added, “This all adds up to a convincing electoral college victory as well as a strong endorsement by his fellow Americans in the popular vote.”
Roughly 120 million people, 60 percent of eligible voters, cast ballots in the election, the Associated Press reported, the highest turnout since 1968. Many strategists thought turnout that high would favor Kerry, but the Bush campaign more than held its own in the battle to get their voters to the polls.
The events of the morning — as many had predicted — unfolded in uncertainty because the final tally for Ohio’s 20 decisive electoral votes was incomplete due to the uncounted provisional ballots.
With nearly all the votes counted, Bush led 51 to 49 percent in Ohio. Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell (R) originally estimated that there would be 175,000 provisional ballots by the time the counties finish their tabulations, but later calculations reduced that figure to between 150,000 and 155,000. Kerry’s campaign did not dispute the estimate.
The state was set for a potentially prolonged election when Edwards had appeared at Boston’s Copley Plaza in the middle of the night vowing to continue the fight. “John Kerry and I made a promise to the American people that in this election every vote would count and every vote would be counted. Tonight we are keeping our word and we will fight for every vote. You deserve no less.”
Kerry advisers reported pandemonium inside the campaign at that time as they scrambled to assess the situation in Ohio, with memories of the bitter recount in Florida four years ago still vivid.
Bush had planned to speak to supporters once the results were clear but held off once Edwards made his announcement, with aides expressing irritation at the Democrats. At the time Edwards spoke, Bush was leading Kerry by more than 3 million votes nationally.
As the presidential election headed toward potential legal wrangling, Republicans expanded their majority in the Senate and appeared likely to do the same in the House. In Senate races, the GOP picked up open Democratic seats in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina, while Democrats captured open Republican seats in Illinois and Colorado. In the most closely watched race, Senate Democratic leader Thomas A. Daschle narrowly lost to former House member John Thune (R) in South Dakota.
Tuesday’s timeline at one point appeared to be a rerun of 2000, with Ohio playing the role of Florida. Both campaigns saw Florida as highly competitive on the eve of the election, but Bush rolled to an easier-than-expected victory there. That made Ohio’s electoral votes crucial to Kerry’s hopes of winning.
With the election shaped by the fight against terrorism and the country deeply divided over the war in Iraq and the economy, energized voters poured out in extraordinary numbers nationwide, prodded by the two campaigns, which worked overtime to get their supporters to the polls.
Polling places in some battlegrounds, including Ohio, stayed open long after their scheduled closings as officials struggled to handle the surge in turnout. Despite threats of legal challenges and other disruptions, voting generally appeared to go smoothly in most states.
Early exit polls appeared to give Kerry a small advantage, but as the night wore on and the actual vote tallies mounted, Democratic exuberance gave way to tense hours of counting and increasing pessimism. When the president fought off Kerry’s challenge in Florida, the state that produced the bitter 36-day recount battle four years ago, he significantly complicated Kerry’s route to the 270 electoral votes needed to win.
The pattern of the returns provided almost no surprises, with many of the states that created such drama four years ago once again keeping the candidates and the American people on edge as they watched returns roll in. By this afternoon, only two states had switched sides from 2000, with Kerry taking back New Hampshire from the Republicans and Republicans taking New Mexico, which narrowly went for Gore in 2000. Iowa also remains a potential pickups for Bush.
Otherwise, there were no surprises as the states began to report. Bush methodically secured his base in the South and border states, capturing his home state of Texas as well as Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Missouri and Kentucky. He won Indiana and West Virginia, which was a Democratic bastion until Bush won it four years ago. In the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, he rolled to a series of victories.
Kerry began a march across the country’s northern tier, beginning in New England with victories in his home state of Massachusetts as well as in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont. To that he added Maryland, the District, and several big prizes: California, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, which the Bush campaign looked at briefly, and Illinois, one of the few states in the Midwest that were not closely contested.
But the two sides were focused on two of the big states where the candidates had spent most of their time and money, Florida and Ohio, and on half a dozen other states that could tip the balance: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, New Hampshire and New Mexico. As the counts came in, the campaigns struggled to examine the data for clues to the outcome.
Early in the day, based on exit polls by the National Election Pool, Bush appeared to be in danger of losing the election and joining his father in being swept out of office after a single term. George H.W. Bush lost his reelection bid in 1992 to Bill Clinton, and the current president systematically sought to avoid the mistakes he believed cost his father that election. But the fact that he did not significantly expand his coalition over that of four years ago put him in another tough fight this year.
After the 2000 election, the country united around Bush’s presidency when terrorists attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. But that unity faded and, after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the nation became polarized. Yesterday’s electorate appeared as divided as it was four years ago.
Bush and Kerry monitored the voting last night from their respective bases of operation in Washington and Massachusetts. Bush voted in Texas in the morning, stopped in Columbus, Ohio, in a show of support for his campaign workers there, and returned to Washington in the afternoon.
Bush spent the evening at the White House residence, surrounded by family and a few close advisers. Kerry began his day in La Crosse, Wis. He then flew to Boston to vote and returned to his Beacon Hill home. He spent four hours doing 38 satellite interviews with local television stations, trying to spur his supporters to vote. Edwards joined in that effort.
Three issues dominated the campaign and shaped yesterday’s vote: terrorism, the war in Iraq and the national economy. Kerry overwhelmingly won among those who said Iraq and the economy were the most important issues to them, while Bush won by a landslide among those who cited terrorism. Beyond those issues, a fifth of yesterday’s voters said moral values influenced their choice, and Bush won them by 4 to 1.
No barometer has been watched more closely throughout the campaign than the president’s approval rating, often considered an indicator of the chance of winning reelection. Ronald Reagan and Clinton were reelected with approval ratings in the mid-fifties, while George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter lost when their approval ratings plunged to 40 percent or below.
Yesterday, according to exit polls, Bush’s approval rating stood at 51 percent, still occupying a political netherworld that provided evidence of how competitive the race remained to the end.
Outside events shaped the campaign far more than the candidates’ strategists did, helping to negate some of the normal advantages enjoyed by an incumbent seeking reelection. The campaigns battled over whether the economy is in clear recovery or is still struggling. At several crucial turns, job figures put Bush on the defensive, and voters gave the economy negative marks yesterday but split over whom they trust more to fix things.
Iraq proved even more troubling for Bush. As the general election campaign opened in the spring, a succession of events put him back on his heels, such as evidence that the insurgency was stronger than the United States had estimated, mounting casualties and then the prison abuse scandal. Bush struggled to explain his policy. In the final weeks, Iraq took center stage again, with stories of kidnappings, beheadings, criticism of the president’s policies and more casualties. Yesterday, voters split almost evenly over whether it was right or wrong to go to war, with a majority saying things there are not going well.
The 2004 campaign will rank as the longest and costliest in American history, a battle that began the day after Kerry wrapped up the Democratic nomination contest on March 3 and continued through the trench warfare of turning out voters until the polls closed last night. At times, it was also one of the most negative, marked by angry anti-Bush energy that first surfaced during the Democratic primaries and by relentless criticism of Kerry by the Bush campaign.
When the Democratic nomination fight began in early 2003, Bush was in a strong position, coming off a historic midterm election victory by his party that was fueled in part by the unity engendered by his actions after the Sept. 11 attacks. He enjoyed an approval rating of 60 percent or better, but over the next months the president took a huge gamble by beginning the war in Iraq. The success of the initial invasion drove his popularity even higher, but over time the war became the most divisive decision of his presidency.
Bush’s campaign wasted no time in going after Kerry, pummeling him as a politician who had been on both sides of virtually every major issue of the past two decades. Bush began the attack with a touch of humor, but the Bush campaign’s advertising and Cheney’s rhetoric carried a much sharper edge that soon began to cut into Kerry profile.
The challenger took a narrow lead heading into his convention in Boston in late July. There, over four nights of speeches and celebration, the campaign highlighted the senator’s service in Vietnam, hoping once and for all to convince voters that he had the credentials to be commander in chief. He emerged temporarily stronger — until the Bush campaign and its allies struck back.
August quickly became an ordeal for Kerry. A group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth aired television ads questioning his combat record in Vietnam, and with a minimal amount of money it took the entire presidential campaign back almost four decades into a debate about that divisive war. Bush could not escape the fracas either, with new questions raised about his service during the war, but it was Kerry who bore the brunt of it.
Republicans gathered in New York at the end of August for their convention and skillfully reconnected Bush with the events surrounding Sept. 11, 2001, the high point of his presidency and a powerfully emotional hinge point for the country. The Republicans also used their convention, in a way the Democrats did not, to attack the opposition.
Bush emerged from his convention with a lead in the polls and pressed his advantage throughout September. Kerry went through another staff shake-up, recruiting several veterans of the Clinton administration and realigning responsibilities. He also set the stage for a fresh debate about Bush’s policies in Iraq, reengaging on an issue that had turned into one of Bush’s biggest problems.
The debates gave Kerry another opening, and he took advantage. In the first debate, Bush looked and occasionally sounded impatient and angry, and even his supporters knew the challenger came out as the winner. Through two more debates, Kerry more than held his own, providing a morale boost to his campaign and, more important, to the legions of Democrats who had watched August and September with growing alarm.
The final weeks generated some of the toughest rhetoric of the campaign and a back-to-basics strategy from both candidates. Fighting more bad news from Iraq, Bush continued to question Kerry’s fitness to lead the country in the war on terrorism. Kerry seized on every headline he could find, including the lack of flu vaccine, to indifferent job numbers and missing high explosives in Iraq to argue that Bush’s presidency has been a failure. Kerry called for a fresh start; Bush warned Americans not to take the risk.
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