Nevada is going for Kerry at the moment. Having lost NH, Bush absolutely needs to pick up NM or he's toast. Winning OH is a big relief though. Unfortunately Kerry is running very strong in IA, MN and WI.

oj,
I wish I was as comfortable about NV and NM as you are. I think they will both go Bush, but, at least Alaska gives a 269-269 Bush win by tie-breaker. I'm staying up until I get more info on how this is going to end up. This is kind of intense!

"It's over."

That's what I said when I went to bed on election night four years ago...

NM appears to be safe. Assuming an even distribution of votes by precinct, with 83% reporting and Bush leading by not quite 20,000 votes, there are 90,000 votes to be counted. They'd have to split about 55,000/35,000 for Kerry, when the rest are 52%/47%.

It'd better be safe, as long as that numbnuts is a WV elector...

And so we have DC...Tehran by Christmas?

OH scares me. Kerry is lawyering up and Fox team seems skeptical of their own call.

But it looks a lot better than it has lately.

And, if W pulls it out and gets the popular vote he's got the democratically granted mandate to continue pursuing the expansion of freedom as leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Not a small thing.

It's looking like W will finish with a clean win in the popular vote (>50%). Fox is reporting that the Kedwards people are "resigned" to the loss, which means (I hope!) no litigation, and perhaps eventually a decline in the incidence of BDS in our nation's politics.

NM and IA and even WI could go W's way. That would be sweeeeeet.

With 89% reporting, the "lead" has stretched back out to 130,000 votes and 3 percentage points. If the WH people are right, and Republican counties have yet to be counted, it should get larger. Can they litigate a 3% - 5% lead?

Spoke too soon: Mary Beth Cahill is contesting the call of Ohio. (She's probably hinting that Mary Cheney is a lesbian, as well.)

Losers.

The counties that aren't counted yet in OH are those where the Dems have registered their infamous million dead people. OH is by no means certain for Bush.

Well, we're standing at 94.2% of precincts reporting, and the lead is back up to 153,000 after having dropped to about 100K, so there were plenty of Republicans there--and that's also what an NBC talking head just said.

I have no clue about Ohio, but Clermont is 55.5% reported, 70% for Bush so far; Cuyahoga 87.3% reported, 66% for Kerry; Hamilton 69.1% reported, 53% for Bush; Washington, 89.3% reported, 59% for Bush.

Now Cuyahoga is huge, but Hamilton is not small, and it seems extraordinarily difficult, from a mathematical standpoint, for the lead to drop much below 100,000.

Throw out the improper provisionals, count the Bush absentees and provisionals (even if it's only 30% - 40%), and it's awfully hard to see the gap closing...

Peter:

Cleveland has 12 precincts uncounted, Akron about 60 and Toledo has about 25. These are the only sizeable Dem pockets left uncounted. Between them Cincinnati and 2 of its collar counties have 1,128 precincts unreported. Those areas are runing over 50,000 voters favorable to the President so far. The dribs and drabs offset. It's over. From here on out the win margin will increase not decrease. I expect it will end up in the 120,000 vote range. A little bit big to try to challenge.

The screen just updated. Now the lead is up to 123,000 votes with 96.2% of the precincts reporting.