Bush Wins Iowa to Claim Last Three States (Iowa = 7 EVs)

Yahoo ^ | 11-5-04 | By MIKE GLOVER, Associated Press Writer

[inquest]

Bush Wins Iowa to Claim Last Three States

8 minutes ago

Politics - AP

By MIKE GLOVER, Associated Press Writer

DES MOINES, Iowa - President Bush (news - web sites) won Iowa on Friday, claiming the last three states of the 2004 presidential election.

Although Democratic Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites) had already conceded the race for the White House on Wednesday, the counting of absentee ballots continued in Iowa, which had been too close to call.

By Friday, Bush had 745,980 votes and Kerry had 732,764 with the number of outstanding ballots too few to change the outcome.

Long after the polls closed on Tuesday, Bush won Ohio, which gave him the 270 electoral votes necessary for a second term, and New Mexico.

With Iowa decided, Bush had 286 electoral votes and Kerry 252.

In 2000, Democrat Al Gore (news - web sites) won Iowa and New Mexico, which went for Bush this year. The only Democratic switch was New Hampshire, which went for Bush in 2000.

Iowa will not certify the results until Nov. 29.

Kerry began campaigning in Iowa nearly three years ago. His surprising win in the Jan. 19 caucuses over a slate of eight other candidates gave him the momentum to claim the Democratic nomination.

[iowaboy]

Sorry this took so long, guys. You can blame our Demoncrat Sec of State Chet Culver, who wants to be the next IA Gov, and our current Demoncrat Gov Tom Vilsack.

Remember on election night when IA stopped counting? My guess is that these guys didn't want IA to be the state to put Bush over the top. How convenient.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

CBS will call Iowa for Bush next summer.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Well, so much for the southern Democrats now. The libs squandered that stronghold. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, DNC.

[Clintonfatigued]

HORRAY!!!

[gitmo]

[patriciamary]

I'm ashamed of Pennsylvania!

[supercat]

Yahoo's popular vote total still shows 51% to 48%. They are truncating, not rounding. It's actually 51.52 to 48.48. I'd round that to 52-48.

Given that the difference is 3%, 51-48 seems quite reasonable. Assuming a perfect two-way split, I'd think the following would be the best roundings:

Winner's share	Report
below 50.25	50-50
50.25-50.75	50-49
50.75-51.25	51-49
51.25-51.75	51-48
51.75-52.25	52-48

I don't know if anyplace formalizes this procedure, but it's based on much the same principle as the 'rounding' algorithm used for PostScript® rendering: symmetrical rounding would halve the effective resolution for stroke widths. Assymetric rounding results in a slight loss of positional accuracy, but enhances stroke-width accuracy which is often more 'important'. Likewise when showing winning/losing percentages, what really matters is the difference. Using straight rounding for both would result in the differences always being even numbers. Using assymetric rounding means the difference will be accurate to the nearest unit.

[Keith in Iowa]

>>Remember on election night when IA stopped counting? My guess is that these guys didn't want IA to be the state to put Bush over the top. How convenient.

Your guess is a little off...

Green county had an equipment malfunction that did not get fixed until Wednesday. Then all that was out was provisional ballots, that were not required to be tallied until Thursday. Absentee ballots have until Noon Monday (11/8) to arrive, postmarked before election day, and still be counted when the counties canvass the vote, which happens sometime Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning (11-8 or 9). There are some state and local races that could swing by the time votes are canvassed. Even if Kerry got 100% of the remaining, uncounted, outstanding ballots, there are not enough to beat the spread in the presidential race - so the call was finally made.