Ohio looms as this year's Florida

Ohio, which has remained consistently Republican in the past 50 years, has emerged as the most crucial state in deciding the outcome of the 2004 US presidential elections.

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With President Bush bagging 249 of the 270 electoral votes and Senator John Kerry trailing at 242, all eyes were riveted on the Buckeye state that accounts for as many as 20 electoral votes and could well sway the outcome in favour of either candidate.

Although almost 97 percent of the popular votes had been counted as of 2:30 (local time) in the morning, the difference in the margin between the two contenders was just about 125,000.

And that is something that was giving hope to the Kerry campaign. Campaign officials claimed there were close to 270,00 absentee ballots, mainly those of military personnel posted overseas, besides provisional ballots that were yet to be counted. They felt if all those ballots were counted, Kerry might be able to claim Ohio.

Ohio secretary of state could not estimate the total number of absentee ballots, but he said certainly it would not run into hundreds of thousands. Since most of the provisional ballots were those of first time voters, of young people who are said to be strongly in favor of Democrats, the Kerry campaign were unwilling to concede victory before every vote was counted.

"We promised during our campaign that every vote will count and every vote will be counted in this election. Tonight we are keeping our word," said Kerry's running mate John Edwards in a brief remark from Boston.

"We want to keep our fight on for every vote," he said. "We've waited four years for this victory. We can wait one more night," he added.

Analysts said that might spell a prolonged counting period as federal law allows ten days from the postmark date on the absentee ballots to reject counting. Thus any ballot postmarked November 2 will be acceptable for counting till November 12.

Al Gore lost Ohio in 2000, but almost equaled Bill Clinton's percentage in 1996 and surpassed that of every other Democrat since 1976.

Incidentally, no Republican has ever been elected president without winning Ohio and analysts say no Democrat can be sure of winning without Ohio.