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The
Fight for White House
Kerry
probably will barely lose the election to Bush
A.H.
Jaffor Ullah
The
political pundits in
America
have always said that among the
10-12 battleground states whoever would win two of the three populous states
�
Pennsylvania
,
Florida
, and
Ohio
� will win the race for White
House. The election has ended
hardly 4 hours ago and the vote count started right away.
One-by-one, 50 states were divided into two columns, namely Bush column
and Kerry column. Before you can
count ten, most eastern states were given to two either Kerry�s or Bush�s
column. Pretty soon, a stark
picture had emerged.
The
industrialized states where the citizens are well educated and enlightened,
those went for Senator Kerry. On
the other hand, the states that are not affluent and where the citizens are
not that well educated and where most people live in rural areas have opted
for Mr. Bush. The electoral map
looked very deceptive in the beginning. Bush�s
states were colored with red and Kerry�s was with blue.
Soon, the map looked all red excepting some blue in the northeastern
corner. Then as the time wore by,
some blue started to show up in the in the upper
Midwest
.
Also, the western seaboard states took the blue color.
As of this writing, 45 states were divided between the Bush and Kerry
column. That leaves only 5 more
states hanging in the air, metaphorically speaking of course.
These are
Nevada
(5 electoral vote),
New Mexico
(5 electoral vote), Iowa (7
electoral votes), Wisconsin (10 electoral votes), and
Ohio
(20 electoral votes).
At
the time of writing this article, Bush has garnered 249 electoral votes while
Kerry has secured 242 electoral votes. If
Bush wins only
Ohio
amongst the seven undecided states,
he will receive 269 electoral votes and he will become the next president
because then John Kerry will also receive 269 electoral votes.
Under this peculiar circumstance, the House of Representatives will
cast the extra vote to end the deadlock. Since
there are more Republican House of representatives in the Congress, Mr. Bush
will get their nods and become the next president.
But realistically, Mr. Bush will probably win another state such as
New Mexico
or
Iowa
and by doing that he will garner 274
electoral votes.
But
then, there is another scenario in which
Ohio
vote count continues for a day or
two and Mr. Kerry wins the state by only 400-500 votes, then Republican will
go to the court and then it will be D�j� vu all over again.
I hope that does not happen and drag the election for 2-3 weeks as it
was the case in November 2000.
The
2004 presidential election was a picture perfect event.
There was no surprise, which was predicted by a few pollsters.
The Zogby International poll made a forecast on the Election Day at
5:30 p.m.
when it announced in its website
that there may be a few surprise. But
that did not happen. The electoral
map looked exactly a repeat or carbon copy of the year 2000.
Mr. Bush had received the exact same set of states and Mr. Kerry carbon
copied the states won by VP Al Gore. But
there is one big change. In the
election 2000, Gore had received 266 and Bush had received 271 electoral
votes. Because of demographic
change that took place in the last four years, by carrying the same states,
Mr. Bush will earn 278 electoral votes and Mr. Gore will receive 259 electoral
votes. Therefore, Senator Kerry
had to win more states to win the election.
Tonight,
Senator Kerry had won the state of
New Hampshire
(4 electoral votes), which Mr. Gore
could not win in 2000. But that
won�t be enough this time around. Kerry
has to win
Ohio
or else he could not receive 271
electoral votes so easily. In all
probability, Bush will receive 20 precious electoral votes by winning
Ohio
.
There is this outside chance that the election may be tied as far as
the electoral votes are concerned. But
realistically that probably won�t happen.
Kerry
camp had executed a flawless campaign but I suppose that was not good enough.
Americans in the southern states are becoming more conservative and
they view the liberal Democrats as not worthy of receiving their votes.
That is precisely why no Democrats can win any of the southern states.
The
political commentators will come in droves as soon as the dust settles and
when either Bush or Kerry is declared the winner.
I will only do a thorough postmortem of 2004 election at a later time.
The
present election had become a cliffhanger and we all had nail biting times
watching the poll report in early evening.
It is almost
1:30 a.m.
in the morning.
It surely looks like we are not going to know the final results in this
wee hour of the night. Senator
Kerry is yet to deliver his concession speech.
Until that happens, the race is on.
But then again, while the Americans are asleep, some news organization
may say that as far as this race is concerned, it is over.
By
reading many international newspapers, I learned that citizens of many other
nations were rooting for Senator Kerry. But
Americans are Americans, and they have their own priorities.
They see the world through a different lens.
Come to think of it, Osama bin Laden�s videotaped message, which
surfaced 4 days before the election may have spooked some voters and did
Senator Kerry in. We will hear
more about it soon after the election results are made public and a winner is
announced. Therefore, stay tuned
for more developments.
---------------------
Dr.
A.H. Jaffor Ullah, a researcher and columnist, writes from
New Orleans
,
USA
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