WASHINGTON – President Bush officially won the vote in the state of Iowa Friday, giving him 286 electoral votes to Sen. John Kerry’s 252 in the presidential election.
Iowa had been leaning toward Bush during Tuesday’s balloting, but the race was too close to call because of uncounted absentee ballots. But with Bush holding a 12,000-vote advantage, Iowa election officials determined Friday that there were not enough absentee votes for Kerry to overcome Bush’s lead.
A win for Kerry in Iowa would not have made a difference in the election. By claiming Ohio’s 20 electoral votes early Wednesday, Bush surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to ensure his re-election.
Bush’s vote total as of Friday – 59.42 million – represented almost 52 percent of the popular vote; Kerry had 55.90 million, or 48 percent. The totals for independent candidate Ralph Nader and others, such as Libertarian Party nominee Michael Badnarik, amounted to less than 1 percent of the vote.
Iowa was one of three states that switched parties between 2000 and 2004. This time, Bush picked up Iowa and New Mexico – both of which voted narrowly for Democratic nominee Al Gore four years ago – while Kerry won in New Hampshire, which went for Bush in 2000.
In addition to solidifying its hold over the South and near West, the Republican ticket gained in the once solidly Democratic upper Midwest. Bush lost traditionally liberal Minnesota by 3 percentage points and reliably Democratic Wisconsin by 1 point. His deficit in Michigan, a union stronghold, was also 3 points. Iowa had voted for every Democratic presidential candidate since 1988.
Bush’s easiest victory was in Utah, where he captured 71 percent of the vote. Kerry’s was in the District of Columbia, where he received 90 percent of the vote.
The vote counting was marred in several places by computer glitches. The most serious appears to be in Ohio, which provided Bush with his decisive margin. Election officials in Franklin County, part of the Columbus metropolitan area, said Friday that a computer error gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in one precinct.
Bush actually received 365 votes in the precinct out of 638 votes cast, Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, told the Columbus Dispatch. It was not clear whether Ohio experienced any other problems with electronic ballots. About 30 percent of the voters in the state voted electronically.
In one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost because officials misjudged the amount of data that could be stored by a computer.
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