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CNN Live At Daybreak

Three States Not Able to Project Election Results Yet

Aired November 03, 2004 - 05:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wisconsin, we are still waiting for more information on and it's possible there could be a call in Wisconsin. I can't give you any more information right now, but that's possible.
Ohio is the one state, though, that we don't have any reason to believe we're going to be able to call because of that great big provisional ballot issue still hanging out there.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Carlos wants to weigh in.

CARLOS WATSON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, you know, one of the interesting things about New Mexico, whether or not President Bush ultimately wins, this is a pretty achievement. Remember, in New Mexico there are about 200,000 more registered Democrats than there are Republicans. They have a Democratic governor. One of the two U.S. senators is a Democrat. So this would be a pretty meaningful achievement just to get this close again.

The other interesting thing about New Mexico we talked about before is their provisional ballot rules are much more liberal. Remember, there's been a debate over the last several weeks, if someone fills out a provisional ballot but, for example, they were in the wrong precinct -- they may be in the right county, but they're in the wrong precinct -- does that provisional ballot count?

New Mexico is one of the places where at least it seems for the moment that it would count. And that could end up becoming an interesting issue.

BLITZER: Jeff?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it just seems to me we're in this sort of state of suspended animation. I think everybody understands what happened last night, that it was a really remarkable victory for the Republicans.

BLITZER: Hold that, hold that thought for a minute.

GREENFIELD: I'll be holding it.

BLITZER: Because I'm going to walk up here.

CNN is now ready to make another projection at this late hour in the morning. CNN is now ready to project John Kerry the winner of 10 electoral votes in Wisconsin, one of the few states still outstanding. John Kerry taking a state that Al Gore won four years ago, 10 electoral votes.

So let's take a look at the board right now. The race for the White House, the electoral vote, as we have it, based on our projections, Bush with 254 electoral votes; Kerry with 252 electoral votes; 270 needed to be elected. That green dot you see on that map, that's Ohio. We simply are saying it's too close to call right now. We can't make a projection. Iowa, the secretary of state in Iowa says they're not going to be able to resume counting ballots until tomorrow. We haven't been able to make a projection in Iowa and New Mexico. The secretary of state there saying they're going to hold off and continue counting ballots tomorrow, as well.

So that's what you have, 254-252 in the electoral college.

Jeff, Wisconsin going for Kerry, according to our projection.

GREENFIELD: Well, what this does is to make it very clear that this did all come down to Ohio. And one of the things I think that the Democrats will be looking at is if this breaks -- if Ohio breaks for George W. Bush, they would have looked and said, you know, a switch of 60,000 or 70,000 votes in Ohio would have given the White House to Kerry, even though he would have lost the popular vote by three and a half million votes. It just one -- it really illustrates the vagaries of the electoral college. But that's where we are now. That's what we know.

And how the president in the next hour or two or three or four is supposed to go to his supporters and say exactly what? We got four million votes than the other guy, we did great in the Senate and the House, I'm almost sure I won Ohio and therefore the presidency, because there's no getting around that. Ohio is the difference now. Whoever wins Ohio is the president of the United States and the odds are overwhelmingly it's Bush.

BLITZER: Because all those other states in the upper Midwest, Minnesota, Michigan...

GREENFIELD: They all (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...

BLITZER: ... and Wisconsin, they all broke for John Kerry, Carlos.

WATSON: Yes, if Jeff is saying before we knew Wisconsin, John Kerry was at 242. And so one way or another, getting the 20 electoral votes from Ohio still would not have been enough to get them to 270. But the fact that he now has the 10 electoral votes from Wisconsin, at least we are projecting that, that puts him in a place that Ohio could put him over the top, probably, probably only further intensifies the battle over Ohio, not that it wasn't going to be intense already.

BLITZER: And there are unanswered questions in Ohio that have to be answered. We don't know how many provisional ballots are out there. We've heard all sorts of numbers being thrown out and when we spoke to the secretary of state of Ohio hours ago now, Ken Blackwell, he himself didn't know how many provisional ballots are out there. We've heard from Democrats maybe a quarter of a million, 250,000. we've heard from Republicans maybe 100,000, 125,000.

Some of them will be thrown out as invalid. Others will be kept. But they're not even going to start counting those provisional ballots for 11 days.

GREENFIELD: Well, that's still an awful big gap, given what we know about the rest of the country. But it does seem to me to make the point that Jeffrey Toobin was making earlier that somebody is going to look at the numbers. Somebody is going to say just how many ballots are out there. And if it's really like 120,000 or 130,000, in which case John Kerry would have to get every one of them to overcome this lead, they may have a different calculus than it turns out there are 300,000 provisional ballots, which could overcome this.

WATSON: And remember the second door that Jeffrey Toobin talked about, which Democrats seem unlikely to want to knock on at the moment, which is to request a recount. And so to say let's go through the 88 counties, including three quarters of them which use the old punch card system and say let's check that out, again, could be a public relations issue on a number of fronts. But...

BLITZER: I suspect that given the mood of the Democrats, tantalizingly they sense they might be close. You're shaking your head. You don't think they'll ask for a recount?

GREENFIELD: Five thousand votes, 10,000 votes, sure. A hundred and twenty-five thousand votes, that's an awful lot.

WATSON: It is an awful lot of votes and last time around when we were talking about Florida, as Jeff correctly points out, we were talking about a couple thousand at best. That ultimately shrunk down to a couple of hundred.

BLITZER: And 537 when all was -- when all of the complete dust was settled by whoever counts those kinds of -- whoever counts those kinds of ballots.

So now we have to wait and see if the president of the United States is going to leave the White House tonight, or this morning. It's already getting light out there. We're at Times Square. We're beginning to see some light in the middle of New York City.

We're going to see if the president is still up. Does he still want to go over to the Reagan Center and make a statement to his supporters?

Our White House correspondent, Dana Bash, is over there -- what are you hearing, Dana?

DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, you know, we saw the pictures here about an hour ago. You saw the music blaring. You saw the lights up. I was just going to say that everything is much more quiet here, but they're watching us so things have just gotten a little bit more lively here. But certainly the people who have been here for 13, 14 hours, they have been waiting. They've stopped serving drinks. They've stopped serving food. And they are still sort of as tired and as waiting in anticipation as we all are.

I've talked to some people over at the campaign, over at Bush- Cheney headquarters. There are people over there sleeping on couches and the senior staff, they're huddled around a conference call, talking to the folks at the White House. Everybody is trying to figure out what's going on and what to do, whether or not the president is going to come over here. It's very much up in the air at this point.

BLITZER: Dana, I assume the crowd behind you has sort of thinned out a little bit.

Hast it?

BASH: It's thinned out a little bit, definitely. You can see there are people sleeping on the floor, kind of hanging out. They're all saying that's not true. I think we woke them up here a little bit, Wolf. They're all -- they all want us to think and want us to see that they are very raucous, they are very much ready for the president to come. So perhaps we did a little bit of a service here to these guys to wake them up. You can hear them.

BLITZER: We want to see them to make sure they don't fall asleep on the job over there. They're strong supporters of the president and the vice president. They're very enthusiastic. I assume they would very much like to see the president and the vice president show up there. But you're saying that's up in the air right now based on what you're hearing, Dana?

BASH: They're trying to figure it out, as John King has been reporting, and as I've been hearing from the folks over at the campaign. They are trying to figure out whether or not the president, as we are hearing, the president does want to come over or he does want to make a statement. That's why we are still seeing people waiting here for that to potentially happen. But they are certainly trying to figure out exactly what the numbers are on the ground -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Approaching 10 minutes after five on the East Coast, 5:00 a.m. That would be -- John King is over at the White House, the North Lawn of the White House -- John, what are you hearing now?

JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, I'm about to disappoint all those suddenly awake people behind Dana Bash, so she might want to run for cover. I'm told by senior administration officials they have just made the decision here at the White House that the president will not go to the Reagan building this morning. His campaign chairman, Marc Racicot, will soon make a statement in which he will talk quite optimistic to that crowd and say that the president believes he has won this election, he believes in the end he will be over 280 electoral votes when all of the votes are counted, but that because so many states right now -- Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico still among them -- are not ready to say that this election is over, that for now they will play this out for another day, but that they believe they had won. But it will not be the president of the United States, despite his several requests to aides that let's go, let's get over there and make that statement, the president will not go. His campaign chairman will make that statement, we are told, quite soon.

They will be quite optimistic. They believe they have won this election. But they also know, especially given the experience of four years ago, they need everyone in the country to believe it, just as they say -- when they say it, they want the country to believe it -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Does that mean, John, we can presume this president is about to get some sleep?

KING: Well, the president usually hits the Oval Office about 7:00 and gets his national security briefing. Remember, he is not just a candidate for president, he is the president. But we will assume that he will get some sleep and perhaps start his day a little bit later today.

But this president, you know, he is very involved. He was involved in his father's campaigns. He was a campaign manager himself in his younger days. He crunches the polls. He looks at the precincts. So if this is still an open question during the day and people are checking what's happening in Ohio and in New Mexico and in other states, you can reassured the president will be deeply involved in those details. But perhaps a few hours shuteye first.

BLITZER: All right, John, stand by.

Dana Bash is over at the Reagan Center, the headquarters for the Bush-Cheney campaign.

I understand, Dana, Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the Republican Party, just made a little announcement to everyone gathered there.

BASH: He just came out and said a couple more minutes. But they've already seen a report and they're starting to thin out a little bit here, starting to make their way out, certainly, as we've been saying, that they have been here for hours and hours, since maybe 6:00 or 7:00 tonight. But now that they know that the president is probably not going to be coming here, they are starting to thin out here -- Wolf.

BLITZER: So we'll have to wait a little bit longer to see what the president has to say, although, as John King is saying, Marc Racicot, the chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign, may come over and make some sort of announcement. And we'll stand by to hear what he has to say. John, if you're still there, let me get a little sense of the drama that's been unfolding, the decision-making process that the president must be going through.

What are the pros and cons of going out and saying I won?

KING: To have clarity in the country, to move forward as quickly as possible, to make clear there will be no transition of power. There are key decisions to be made about military offensives in Iraq. There are key decisions to be made if you are going to be the continuing president of the United States about a State of the Union Address that will come up in a month.

They would like to move as cleanly and as quickly as possible. But those are the pros -- clean this up and move on, make it clear to the American people and the world that the United States has a president, it is done and certain, as soon as possible.

The cons, of course, everyone remembers the bitterness of four years ago. Everyone remembers those questioning the legitimacy of this president. Some Democrats have done it since day one and they continue to question the legitimacy of this president. This president believes he has a majority. He believes within 24, perhaps 48 hours, that will be crystal clear to the country, that he also has a victory in the electoral college.

They made the decision here just moments ago, despite their eagerness to declare victory, that in the long-term it was better to wait because they believe they not only have an electoral college victory, or will officially quite soon, they have a majority. They have gained seats in the Congress. They believe this will be just fine for them and they do not want it to be disputed at all -- Wolf.

BLITZER: John King at the White House. John, thanks very much.

We'll stand by to hear from Marc Racicot, the chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign. We'll go there once he starts speaking. Let's bring in Senator-Elect John Thune from South Dakota.

He's joining us now live.

Congratulations.

Senator-Elect Thune, we're getting that picture just in...

JOHN THUNE, (R-SD), SENATOR-ELECT: Go ahead.

BLITZER: Can you hear me OK?

THUNE: I can, Wolf. Yes, I can. Thank you.

BLITZER: Well, let me say, first of all, congratulations. A very fiercely fought battle between you and Tom Daschle.

A, have you spoken with him? Has he formally conceded?

THUNE: I did speak with him earlier, Wolf, and he offered his congratulations and his assistance. I had a very, a very gracious conversation. And so we're getting ready to move forward.

BLITZER: When you say you're getting ready to move forward, you'll be sworn in in early January into the United States Senate.

What did you win by? How many votes?

THUNE: You know, I haven't seen the final tally. I think it was probably -- it was a close race and it was a race that could have gone either way. We were very fortunate to come out on top. I think it came down to, you know, getting the vote out, who turned out. And, you know, certainly having the presidential race on the ballot this year helped us, as it did, I think, a lot of other candidates around the country. But we've got a lot of work ahead of us now. But we feel very fortunate to come out on top. It took us until about 4:00 in the morning to get it all sorted out and I haven't seen the final vote tally. But I think it's at least a margin that is comfortable enough for us to feel confident that we're going to be able to head to the Senate.

BLITZER: What do you believe was the biggest winning issue that you had going for you in this campaign that did the most damage to Tom Daschle?

THUNE: Well, I think, Wolf, probably it was the whole question of gridlock in the United States Senate, the obstruction and, you know, stopping the agenda. I think people here in South Dakota want to see their institutions of government work for them. They want to see a positive agenda move forward. And I think ultimately that message began to sink in and penetrate. It seemed to me, at least, that that was probably a very defining and compelling argument for people in South Dakota.

WATSON: Senator-Elect Thune, this is Carlos Watson.

Congratulations.

THUNE: Thanks, Carlos, very much.

WATSON: I wanted to ask you, as you look forward, potentially with an increased -- you join an increased Republican majority in the Senate, are there new issues that you think will come on the table that the Senate hasn't approached during the president's first four years that now, with a strengthened majority, you might take up some of those issues, whether that's Social Security reform or other issues?

THUNE: You know, I think there are some of those probably bigger ticket type issues, Carlos, that could be contemplated in a second term. I do think that clearly there are issues that have sort of stalled out in the Senate that will get some new life now with a stronger majority, some new leadership there, you know, energy policy, health care reform, medical malpractice reform, you know, doing some things to lower the cost of health care in this country, making the tax relief permanent, getting some of these judges through.

I think those are all issues that have sort of being languishing out there, and frankly, that was one of the issues in this race that I think was effective for us, and that was, you know, conveying to the people of South Dakota and the people of this country that it's important to have senators who are going to work together to try and move the agenda forward rather than to block and obstruct it.

BLITZER: John Thune, the newly elected senator from South Dakota, defeating Tom Daschle.

Congratulations.

Thanks, Senator-Elect, very much, for joining us.

THUNE: Thank you.

It's good to be with you this morning.

BLITZER: All right, we'll see you in Washington once you get there.

I just want to update our viewers.

We're still standing by. Instead of Marc Racicot, expected to speak before that crowd gathered at the Reagan Center in Washington, we're now told that Andy Card, the White House chief of staff, will come over and make some sort of announcement, some sort of statement to these people who are still there, supporters of the president and the vice president.

Once Andy Card goes there and gives some sort of word on behalf of the president, we'll go there live and bring his comments to our viewers in the United States and around the world.

Jeff Greenfield, you watched Senator Thune, Senator-Elect Thune. He lost two years ago to Tim Johnson and he beat Tom Daschle. It's a pretty powerful guy in South Dakota to defeat.

GREENFIELD: Well, he's a pretty powerful guy in the country to defeat. That was one of the points that a lot of our correspondents were making. Next to the presidency itself, taking down a leader of the opposition party who was seen by Republicans as a symbol of gridlock, the guy who led the filibuster against some of the president's judicial nominees, the guy who was organizing a minority in the Senate to prevent the president's passage, this was a particularly sweet victory.

And one of the questions that it also raises with me is whether or not some of the Republicans in the Senate, who have been at -- who have been unhappy with some of the president's policies, particularly in the spending area, some of the deficit hawks who think that he hasn't paid enough attention to the spending side of things, are, instead of joining in lockstep with this -- with the president in the second term and a big majority, are going to say wait a minute, you know, now that you've been reelected, assuming that this is what happens in Ohio, now you've got to start paying attention to the things we care about.

So the assumption that there's going to be a unified Senate majority of Republicans, we may have to see how that plays out in the era of big deficits with the Republican Party. WATSON: You know, one of the other interesting things, when you think about the Senate and you think about this freshman class, is this may be one of the most intriguing freshman classes to come into Congress in maybe at least a decade. You've got Barack Obama, who's widely regarded as a rising star in his party. You've got Tom Coburn in Oklahoma, who will clearly be a leader on social values issues, some of the cultural issues that Jeff has talked about. You've got Vitter in Louisiana, who's clearly going to walk in as a hero, having avoided a runoff, winning some 51 percent. Johnny Isakson from Georgia is a guy who's relatively well known. There is the chance that Martinez may come in as the first Cuban-American in the Senate.

A lot of people who may be impact freshmen, if you will, in their first six years.

BLITZER: Ken Salazar, the Democrat from Colorado.

WATSON: Sure. I mean, and obviously John Thune, knocking off the Senate minority leader. A lot of people who will come in here not just as anonymous freshmen, but with pretty significant victories.

BLITZER: All right, Jeff, let's get back to the presidential race.

The president is not going to declare victory tonight. He's not going to go over and speak to his supporters. Andy Card is going to go over there and say that things are looking great and we should be very happy. He's going to say that the Republicans are doing great.

But it looks like there's going to be at least another day of uncertainty as we see what the dust -- where the dust settles in Ohio.

GREENFIELD: Yes. But it seems to me that the end game of this is pretty clear. Unless there are a whole bunch more provisional ballots in Ohio that go overwhelmingly for John Kerry, how he comes out of this with Ohio's 20 electoral votes is frankly beyond me.

Now...

BLITZER: The secretary of state in Ohio told us they've already counted the absentee ballots. It's the provisional ballots that they have to count and they can't start counting those for 11 days. And it's the military ballots from troops around the world who sent in their ballots that they have to start counting, as well.

GREENFIELD: Which are not likely to be overwhelmingly for John Kerry. If anything, they're likely to be overwhelmingly for the president.

BLITZER: That's correct.

GREENFIELD: So, yes, I mean this is the sort of thing where maybe the smart thing to do is everybody should go to sleep for a few hours and wake up tomorrow and see where we are, because...

BLITZER: You mean wake up today? GREENFIELD: That's, you're absolutely right. That's what I mean.

BLITZER: It's, what time is it? 5:19, 5:20 a.m. on the East Coast.

Carlos, you want to weigh in on the...

WATSON: Well, you know, it's worth just recapping that there are at least a couple of significant things that have happened tonight in terms of the presidential election.

One, the fact that the president won not just by a half a percent or 1 percent in the popular vote, but it looks like he's likely to end up close to four million votes ahead. That's meaningful.

The fact that Florida was not close by our numbers, but apparently the president enjoyed a meaningful victory there, that means something.

The fact that so far only New Hampshire has switched.

You know, this race is interesting on a number of levels. We'll end up waiting on Ohio, but a meaningful and memorable race.

GREENFIELD: That's right.

BLITZER: Ohio, New Mexico and Iowa. We're still waiting to get those results.

All right, we'll take another quick break.

More coverage from the Nasdaq market site in New York City, CNN election headquarters.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back.

Approaching 5:30 a.m. here on the East Coast, New York City. That's where we are.

Three states were are not able to project for various reasons -- Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico. The White House chief of staff, Andy Card, expected to head over a couple blocks away from the White House to the Reagan Center to speak to supporters there, speak on behalf of the president.

We're standing by to hear what Andy Card may have to say.

We'll bring that live to our viewers.

David Gergen joining us now. We've said good morning to Jeff Greenfield. He's going to get a couple hours of sleep before he's back on the air. He, of course, did an excellent job, as he always does.

David, did you anticipate it was going to fall out as it is falling out?

DAVID GERGEN: I sure as hell never anticipated doing early morning television like this. That's for -- no. I didn't anticipate this. I don't think any of us did. We looked at the polls over the last few weeks. The conventional wisdom was the president gets 48, 49 percent in the final polls, he's not going to get much more than that, maybe 1 percent more in the actual election.

WATSON: Right.

GERGEN: He got way over that and I think that left everyone sort of puzzled. What the heck happened?

I have yet to hear a theory of the case, in effect, for what happened, why it really happened. I mean we have individual states we looked at, we know where he is, but something happened here that's pretty dramatic. And it's -- for the Democrats, it's more than just the candidate. Now, I would make this argument.

The white vote is about 80 percent of the national vote. Bush won by 15 percent. The last time around he won by a much smaller margin. That went up considerably. But the Democrats haven't won a majority of the white vote since 1964, in a presidential election. They haven't won a majority of the national vote, 50 percent or more, since 1976. You know, this is a party that's got some serious questions of how do you get a majority of Americans to support it. It's a big, big question. Since 1994 in the congressional elections, this is the sixth one now, they, in six congressional elections in a row, I don't think they've broken 48.5 percent of the total vote.

WATSON: So here is going to be one of the critiques that we'll hear tomorrow and going forward, assuming the Democrats lose. They'll say for the second time in a row, they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, right? They'll say that Al Gore was coming off a two term Democratic presidency with prosperity, with peace, wouldn't use Bill Clinton well and ultimately won the popular vote but lost that election.

They'll say here came John Kerry with a war that clearly wasn't popular, mixed, at best; with an economy that, while getting better, was still somewhat troubled, and particularly in places like Ohio, where the unemployment rate was higher than the 5.4 percent national average, and still he couldn't ultimately deliver.

And so I think one of the other pieces you're going to hear is are we choosing the wrong candidates? Are we choosing the Ivy League educated, you know, straight, tall and erect guys who ultimately aren't connecting in the way that Bill Clinton did, aren't connecting maybe in the way that a governor from Plains once upon a time did. And I think you're going to hear that critique again that we've got to choose not only policy, but personality going forward.

BLITZER: I don't want to jump ahead, though. We haven't yet projected Ohio. That's going to make all the difference in the world. The only thing we've concluded so far, it's too close to call. We can't call it. It's a green state as far as we're looking at all those numbers. We don't know how many provisional ballots there are out in Ohio. We don't know where they're going to come down and how many will be accepted, how many will go for Bush, how many will go for Kerry.

You're sort of smiling as I'm throwing out all the caveats.

GERGEN: I really appreciate how cautious you've been in all of this, because I think it has leant a precision and sort of a lot of caveats. You know, had you gone with the exit polls, for example, early in the evening, just think how far afield...

(CROSSTALK)

GERGEN: ... the analysis would have been.

But at the same time, I think that the handwriting is clearly on the wall in Ohio and perhaps John Kerry can pull it out. But when you add in the military ballots to the provisional, as you were just saying a few moments ago, it seems extremely unlikely that he can win. It may be theoretically possible, but...

BLITZER: So when they wake up in the morning, and it's now almost the morning, it's almost 5:30 a.m., John Kerry and John Edwards and all their top advisers, their campaign strategists, and they look at Ohio -- and it's all boiling down to Ohio, let's not kid ourselves -- what do you think they're going to do?

GERGEN: I think they have to hear from Ken Blackwell there whether he's going to -- whether, as secretary of state, doesn't he have to, in effect, confirm or certify the results of the election?

WATSON: Right. Right.

GERGEN: If he says tomorrow I'm not going to certify the election, yes, and he concludes that there's more there, then they've got a basis on which they might want to push it on for a while.

WATSON: I thought, too, the other thing they do, David, too, though, is I bet you they go, the Democrats go county by county across those 88 counties...

GERGEN: Right.

WATSON: ... and go did we miss a bunch of ballots, right, given that three quarters of these places were punch card ballots? There's a lot going on. I bet you they'll say let's just fact check everything. Let's double check everything. I bet you that will become part of the equation. So not just the provisional ballots, but that part, too.

GERGEN: I agree with that. But the John Edwards' statement tonight suggested that they're going to give this one more day, not 11 more days.

WATSON: Right.

BLITZER: That's what he said.

GERGEN: Yes, that's right.

BLITZER: If it takes another day.

GERGEN: I think that they ought to push to wrap it up tomorrow.

BLITZER: Let's take a look at that popular vote. Right now, 97 percent of the precincts in the United States reporting -- Bush with 51 percent, Kerry 48 percent, Nader 1 percent. That looks like a pretty good popular victory, 51 percent, a majority, for the president.

As far as the electoral college is concerned, it's very, very close. Let's get those numbers here. It is right behind me.

WATSON: Two fifty...

BLITZER: Two fifty-four for Bush, 252 for Kerry. That looks a lot closer than the popular vote, David.

GERGEN: It sure does. Well, it's, you know, you -- there are little trophies one can keep in one's case. But the fact is, you know, that he can't make it without Ohio. And he's 140,000 votes behind in Ohio. And it's just not clear that those votes are anywhere to be found.

So I would think, Wolf, coming -- I would think he'd want to push to resolve tomorrow.

BLITZER: We'll see what happens tomorrow.

David Gergen, Carlos Watson, it's been a long night for all of us.

We're going to sign off right now. But so much more coverage only beginning here on CNN. Andy Card still expected to make an appearance over at the Reagan Center to speak on behalf of the president. We'll have that live here on CNN.

AMERICAN MORNING begins at 7:00 a.m. eastern. Our entire team will have all of the latest information.

I'll be back later today, 5:00 p.m. Eastern, for "WOLF BLITZER REPORTS," a complete wrap-up of what has happened and what may not yet have happened in this election.

In the meantime, let me throw it over right after a short break to CNN's Carol Costello.

In fact, let's throw it over to Carol Costello right now.

From the Nasdaq market site at Times Square over to the CNN Center in Atlanta -- Carol.

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Aired November 3, 2004 - 05:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wisconsin, we are still waiting for more information on and it's possible there could be a call in Wisconsin. I can't give you any more information right now, but that's possible.
Ohio is the one state, though, that we don't have any reason to believe we're going to be able to call because of that great big provisional ballot issue still hanging out there.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Carlos wants to weigh in.

CARLOS WATSON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, you know, one of the interesting things about New Mexico, whether or not President Bush ultimately wins, this is a pretty achievement. Remember, in New Mexico there are about 200,000 more registered Democrats than there are Republicans. They have a Democratic governor. One of the two U.S. senators is a Democrat. So this would be a pretty meaningful achievement just to get this close again.

The other interesting thing about New Mexico we talked about before is their provisional ballot rules are much more liberal. Remember, there's been a debate over the last several weeks, if someone fills out a provisional ballot but, for example, they were in the wrong precinct -- they may be in the right county, but they're in the wrong precinct -- does that provisional ballot count?

New Mexico is one of the places where at least it seems for the moment that it would count. And that could end up becoming an interesting issue.

BLITZER: Jeff?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it just seems to me we're in this sort of state of suspended animation. I think everybody understands what happened last night, that it was a really remarkable victory for the Republicans.

BLITZER: Hold that, hold that thought for a minute.

GREENFIELD: I'll be holding it.

BLITZER: Because I'm going to walk up here.

CNN is now ready to make another projection at this late hour in the morning. CNN is now ready to project John Kerry the winner of 10 electoral votes in Wisconsin, one of the few states still outstanding. John Kerry taking a state that Al Gore won four years ago, 10 electoral votes.

So let's take a look at the board right now. The race for the White House, the electoral vote, as we have it, based on our projections, Bush with 254 electoral votes; Kerry with 252 electoral votes; 270 needed to be elected. That green dot you see on that map, that's Ohio. We simply are saying it's too close to call right now. We can't make a projection. Iowa, the secretary of state in Iowa says they're not going to be able to resume counting ballots until tomorrow. We haven't been able to make a projection in Iowa and New Mexico. The secretary of state there saying they're going to hold off and continue counting ballots tomorrow, as well.

So that's what you have, 254-252 in the electoral college.

Jeff, Wisconsin going for Kerry, according to our projection.

GREENFIELD: Well, what this does is to make it very clear that this did all come down to Ohio. And one of the things I think that the Democrats will be looking at is if this breaks -- if Ohio breaks for George W. Bush, they would have looked and said, you know, a switch of 60,000 or 70,000 votes in Ohio would have given the White House to Kerry, even though he would have lost the popular vote by three and a half million votes. It just one -- it really illustrates the vagaries of the electoral college. But that's where we are now. That's what we know.

And how the president in the next hour or two or three or four is supposed to go to his supporters and say exactly what? We got four million votes than the other guy, we did great in the Senate and the House, I'm almost sure I won Ohio and therefore the presidency, because there's no getting around that. Ohio is the difference now. Whoever wins Ohio is the president of the United States and the odds are overwhelmingly it's Bush.

BLITZER: Because all those other states in the upper Midwest, Minnesota, Michigan...

GREENFIELD: They all (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...

BLITZER: ... and Wisconsin, they all broke for John Kerry, Carlos.

WATSON: Yes, if Jeff is saying before we knew Wisconsin, John Kerry was at 242. And so one way or another, getting the 20 electoral votes from Ohio still would not have been enough to get them to 270. But the fact that he now has the 10 electoral votes from Wisconsin, at least we are projecting that, that puts him in a place that Ohio could put him over the top, probably, probably only further intensifies the battle over Ohio, not that it wasn't going to be intense already.

BLITZER: And there are unanswered questions in Ohio that have to be answered. We don't know how many provisional ballots are out there. We've heard all sorts of numbers being thrown out and when we spoke to the secretary of state of Ohio hours ago now, Ken Blackwell, he himself didn't know how many provisional ballots are out there. We've heard from Democrats maybe a quarter of a million, 250,000. we've heard from Republicans maybe 100,000, 125,000.

Some of them will be thrown out as invalid. Others will be kept. But they're not even going to start counting those provisional ballots for 11 days.

GREENFIELD: Well, that's still an awful big gap, given what we know about the rest of the country. But it does seem to me to make the point that Jeffrey Toobin was making earlier that somebody is going to look at the numbers. Somebody is going to say just how many ballots are out there. And if it's really like 120,000 or 130,000, in which case John Kerry would have to get every one of them to overcome this lead, they may have a different calculus than it turns out there are 300,000 provisional ballots, which could overcome this.

WATSON: And remember the second door that Jeffrey Toobin talked about, which Democrats seem unlikely to want to knock on at the moment, which is to request a recount. And so to say let's go through the 88 counties, including three quarters of them which use the old punch card system and say let's check that out, again, could be a public relations issue on a number of fronts. But...

BLITZER: I suspect that given the mood of the Democrats, tantalizingly they sense they might be close. You're shaking your head. You don't think they'll ask for a recount?

GREENFIELD: Five thousand votes, 10,000 votes, sure. A hundred and twenty-five thousand votes, that's an awful lot.

WATSON: It is an awful lot of votes and last time around when we were talking about Florida, as Jeff correctly points out, we were talking about a couple thousand at best. That ultimately shrunk down to a couple of hundred.

BLITZER: And 537 when all was -- when all of the complete dust was settled by whoever counts those kinds of -- whoever counts those kinds of ballots.

So now we have to wait and see if the president of the United States is going to leave the White House tonight, or this morning. It's already getting light out there. We're at Times Square. We're beginning to see some light in the middle of New York City.

We're going to see if the president is still up. Does he still want to go over to the Reagan Center and make a statement to his supporters?

Our White House correspondent, Dana Bash, is over there -- what are you hearing, Dana?

DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, you know, we saw the pictures here about an hour ago. You saw the music blaring. You saw the lights up. I was just going to say that everything is much more quiet here, but they're watching us so things have just gotten a little bit more lively here. But certainly the people who have been here for 13, 14 hours, they have been waiting. They've stopped serving drinks. They've stopped serving food. And they are still sort of as tired and as waiting in anticipation as we all are.

I've talked to some people over at the campaign, over at Bush- Cheney headquarters. There are people over there sleeping on couches and the senior staff, they're huddled around a conference call, talking to the folks at the White House. Everybody is trying to figure out what's going on and what to do, whether or not the president is going to come over here. It's very much up in the air at this point.

BLITZER: Dana, I assume the crowd behind you has sort of thinned out a little bit.

Hast it?

BASH: It's thinned out a little bit, definitely. You can see there are people sleeping on the floor, kind of hanging out. They're all saying that's not true. I think we woke them up here a little bit, Wolf. They're all -- they all want us to think and want us to see that they are very raucous, they are very much ready for the president to come. So perhaps we did a little bit of a service here to these guys to wake them up. You can hear them.

BLITZER: We want to see them to make sure they don't fall asleep on the job over there. They're strong supporters of the president and the vice president. They're very enthusiastic. I assume they would very much like to see the president and the vice president show up there. But you're saying that's up in the air right now based on what you're hearing, Dana?

BASH: They're trying to figure it out, as John King has been reporting, and as I've been hearing from the folks over at the campaign. They are trying to figure out whether or not the president, as we are hearing, the president does want to come over or he does want to make a statement. That's why we are still seeing people waiting here for that to potentially happen. But they are certainly trying to figure out exactly what the numbers are on the ground -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Approaching 10 minutes after five on the East Coast, 5:00 a.m. That would be -- John King is over at the White House, the North Lawn of the White House -- John, what are you hearing now?

JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, I'm about to disappoint all those suddenly awake people behind Dana Bash, so she might want to run for cover. I'm told by senior administration officials they have just made the decision here at the White House that the president will not go to the Reagan building this morning. His campaign chairman, Marc Racicot, will soon make a statement in which he will talk quite optimistic to that crowd and say that the president believes he has won this election, he believes in the end he will be over 280 electoral votes when all of the votes are counted, but that because so many states right now -- Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico still among them -- are not ready to say that this election is over, that for now they will play this out for another day, but that they believe they had won. But it will not be the president of the United States, despite his several requests to aides that let's go, let's get over there and make that statement, the president will not go. His campaign chairman will make that statement, we are told, quite soon.

They will be quite optimistic. They believe they have won this election. But they also know, especially given the experience of four years ago, they need everyone in the country to believe it, just as they say -- when they say it, they want the country to believe it -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Does that mean, John, we can presume this president is about to get some sleep?

KING: Well, the president usually hits the Oval Office about 7:00 and gets his national security briefing. Remember, he is not just a candidate for president, he is the president. But we will assume that he will get some sleep and perhaps start his day a little bit later today.

But this president, you know, he is very involved. He was involved in his father's campaigns. He was a campaign manager himself in his younger days. He crunches the polls. He looks at the precincts. So if this is still an open question during the day and people are checking what's happening in Ohio and in New Mexico and in other states, you can reassured the president will be deeply involved in those details. But perhaps a few hours shuteye first.

BLITZER: All right, John, stand by.

Dana Bash is over at the Reagan Center, the headquarters for the Bush-Cheney campaign.

I understand, Dana, Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the Republican Party, just made a little announcement to everyone gathered there.

BASH: He just came out and said a couple more minutes. But they've already seen a report and they're starting to thin out a little bit here, starting to make their way out, certainly, as we've been saying, that they have been here for hours and hours, since maybe 6:00 or 7:00 tonight. But now that they know that the president is probably not going to be coming here, they are starting to thin out here -- Wolf.

BLITZER: So we'll have to wait a little bit longer to see what the president has to say, although, as John King is saying, Marc Racicot, the chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign, may come over and make some sort of announcement. And we'll stand by to hear what he has to say. John, if you're still there, let me get a little sense of the drama that's been unfolding, the decision-making process that the president must be going through.

What are the pros and cons of going out and saying I won?

KING: To have clarity in the country, to move forward as quickly as possible, to make clear there will be no transition of power. There are key decisions to be made about military offensives in Iraq. There are key decisions to be made if you are going to be the continuing president of the United States about a State of the Union Address that will come up in a month.

They would like to move as cleanly and as quickly as possible. But those are the pros -- clean this up and move on, make it clear to the American people and the world that the United States has a president, it is done and certain, as soon as possible.

The cons, of course, everyone remembers the bitterness of four years ago. Everyone remembers those questioning the legitimacy of this president. Some Democrats have done it since day one and they continue to question the legitimacy of this president. This president believes he has a majority. He believes within 24, perhaps 48 hours, that will be crystal clear to the country, that he also has a victory in the electoral college.

They made the decision here just moments ago, despite their eagerness to declare victory, that in the long-term it was better to wait because they believe they not only have an electoral college victory, or will officially quite soon, they have a majority. They have gained seats in the Congress. They believe this will be just fine for them and they do not want it to be disputed at all -- Wolf.

BLITZER: John King at the White House. John, thanks very much.

We'll stand by to hear from Marc Racicot, the chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign. We'll go there once he starts speaking. Let's bring in Senator-Elect John Thune from South Dakota.

He's joining us now live.

Congratulations.

Senator-Elect Thune, we're getting that picture just in...

JOHN THUNE, (R-SD), SENATOR-ELECT: Go ahead.

BLITZER: Can you hear me OK?

THUNE: I can, Wolf. Yes, I can. Thank you.

BLITZER: Well, let me say, first of all, congratulations. A very fiercely fought battle between you and Tom Daschle.

A, have you spoken with him? Has he formally conceded?

THUNE: I did speak with him earlier, Wolf, and he offered his congratulations and his assistance. I had a very, a very gracious conversation. And so we're getting ready to move forward.

BLITZER: When you say you're getting ready to move forward, you'll be sworn in in early January into the United States Senate.

What did you win by? How many votes?

THUNE: You know, I haven't seen the final tally. I think it was probably -- it was a close race and it was a race that could have gone either way. We were very fortunate to come out on top. I think it came down to, you know, getting the vote out, who turned out. And, you know, certainly having the presidential race on the ballot this year helped us, as it did, I think, a lot of other candidates around the country. But we've got a lot of work ahead of us now. But we feel very fortunate to come out on top. It took us until about 4:00 in the morning to get it all sorted out and I haven't seen the final vote tally. But I think it's at least a margin that is comfortable enough for us to feel confident that we're going to be able to head to the Senate.

BLITZER: What do you believe was the biggest winning issue that you had going for you in this campaign that did the most damage to Tom Daschle?

THUNE: Well, I think, Wolf, probably it was the whole question of gridlock in the United States Senate, the obstruction and, you know, stopping the agenda. I think people here in South Dakota want to see their institutions of government work for them. They want to see a positive agenda move forward. And I think ultimately that message began to sink in and penetrate. It seemed to me, at least, that that was probably a very defining and compelling argument for people in South Dakota.

WATSON: Senator-Elect Thune, this is Carlos Watson.

Congratulations.

THUNE: Thanks, Carlos, very much.

WATSON: I wanted to ask you, as you look forward, potentially with an increased -- you join an increased Republican majority in the Senate, are there new issues that you think will come on the table that the Senate hasn't approached during the president's first four years that now, with a strengthened majority, you might take up some of those issues, whether that's Social Security reform or other issues?

THUNE: You know, I think there are some of those probably bigger ticket type issues, Carlos, that could be contemplated in a second term. I do think that clearly there are issues that have sort of stalled out in the Senate that will get some new life now with a stronger majority, some new leadership there, you know, energy policy, health care reform, medical malpractice reform, you know, doing some things to lower the cost of health care in this country, making the tax relief permanent, getting some of these judges through.

I think those are all issues that have sort of being languishing out there, and frankly, that was one of the issues in this race that I think was effective for us, and that was, you know, conveying to the people of South Dakota and the people of this country that it's important to have senators who are going to work together to try and move the agenda forward rather than to block and obstruct it.

BLITZER: John Thune, the newly elected senator from South Dakota, defeating Tom Daschle.

Congratulations.

Thanks, Senator-Elect, very much, for joining us.

THUNE: Thank you.

It's good to be with you this morning.

BLITZER: All right, we'll see you in Washington once you get there.

I just want to update our viewers.

We're still standing by. Instead of Marc Racicot, expected to speak before that crowd gathered at the Reagan Center in Washington, we're now told that Andy Card, the White House chief of staff, will come over and make some sort of announcement, some sort of statement to these people who are still there, supporters of the president and the vice president.

Once Andy Card goes there and gives some sort of word on behalf of the president, we'll go there live and bring his comments to our viewers in the United States and around the world.

Jeff Greenfield, you watched Senator Thune, Senator-Elect Thune. He lost two years ago to Tim Johnson and he beat Tom Daschle. It's a pretty powerful guy in South Dakota to defeat.

GREENFIELD: Well, he's a pretty powerful guy in the country to defeat. That was one of the points that a lot of our correspondents were making. Next to the presidency itself, taking down a leader of the opposition party who was seen by Republicans as a symbol of gridlock, the guy who led the filibuster against some of the president's judicial nominees, the guy who was organizing a minority in the Senate to prevent the president's passage, this was a particularly sweet victory.

And one of the questions that it also raises with me is whether or not some of the Republicans in the Senate, who have been at -- who have been unhappy with some of the president's policies, particularly in the spending area, some of the deficit hawks who think that he hasn't paid enough attention to the spending side of things, are, instead of joining in lockstep with this -- with the president in the second term and a big majority, are going to say wait a minute, you know, now that you've been reelected, assuming that this is what happens in Ohio, now you've got to start paying attention to the things we care about.

So the assumption that there's going to be a unified Senate majority of Republicans, we may have to see how that plays out in the era of big deficits with the Republican Party. WATSON: You know, one of the other interesting things, when you think about the Senate and you think about this freshman class, is this may be one of the most intriguing freshman classes to come into Congress in maybe at least a decade. You've got Barack Obama, who's widely regarded as a rising star in his party. You've got Tom Coburn in Oklahoma, who will clearly be a leader on social values issues, some of the cultural issues that Jeff has talked about. You've got Vitter in Louisiana, who's clearly going to walk in as a hero, having avoided a runoff, winning some 51 percent. Johnny Isakson from Georgia is a guy who's relatively well known. There is the chance that Martinez may come in as the first Cuban-American in the Senate.

A lot of people who may be impact freshmen, if you will, in their first six years.

BLITZER: Ken Salazar, the Democrat from Colorado.

WATSON: Sure. I mean, and obviously John Thune, knocking off the Senate minority leader. A lot of people who will come in here not just as anonymous freshmen, but with pretty significant victories.

BLITZER: All right, Jeff, let's get back to the presidential race.

The president is not going to declare victory tonight. He's not going to go over and speak to his supporters. Andy Card is going to go over there and say that things are looking great and we should be very happy. He's going to say that the Republicans are doing great.

But it looks like there's going to be at least another day of uncertainty as we see what the dust -- where the dust settles in Ohio.

GREENFIELD: Yes. But it seems to me that the end game of this is pretty clear. Unless there are a whole bunch more provisional ballots in Ohio that go overwhelmingly for John Kerry, how he comes out of this with Ohio's 20 electoral votes is frankly beyond me.

Now...

BLITZER: The secretary of state in Ohio told us they've already counted the absentee ballots. It's the provisional ballots that they have to count and they can't start counting those for 11 days. And it's the military ballots from troops around the world who sent in their ballots that they have to start counting, as well.

GREENFIELD: Which are not likely to be overwhelmingly for John Kerry. If anything, they're likely to be overwhelmingly for the president.

BLITZER: That's correct.

GREENFIELD: So, yes, I mean this is the sort of thing where maybe the smart thing to do is everybody should go to sleep for a few hours and wake up tomorrow and see where we are, because...

BLITZER: You mean wake up today? GREENFIELD: That's, you're absolutely right. That's what I mean.

BLITZER: It's, what time is it? 5:19, 5:20 a.m. on the East Coast.

Carlos, you want to weigh in on the...

WATSON: Well, you know, it's worth just recapping that there are at least a couple of significant things that have happened tonight in terms of the presidential election.

One, the fact that the president won not just by a half a percent or 1 percent in the popular vote, but it looks like he's likely to end up close to four million votes ahead. That's meaningful.

The fact that Florida was not close by our numbers, but apparently the president enjoyed a meaningful victory there, that means something.

The fact that so far only New Hampshire has switched.

You know, this race is interesting on a number of levels. We'll end up waiting on Ohio, but a meaningful and memorable race.

GREENFIELD: That's right.

BLITZER: Ohio, New Mexico and Iowa. We're still waiting to get those results.

All right, we'll take another quick break.

More coverage from the Nasdaq market site in New York City, CNN election headquarters.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back.

Approaching 5:30 a.m. here on the East Coast, New York City. That's where we are.

Three states were are not able to project for various reasons -- Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico. The White House chief of staff, Andy Card, expected to head over a couple blocks away from the White House to the Reagan Center to speak to supporters there, speak on behalf of the president.

We're standing by to hear what Andy Card may have to say.

We'll bring that live to our viewers.

David Gergen joining us now. We've said good morning to Jeff Greenfield. He's going to get a couple hours of sleep before he's back on the air. He, of course, did an excellent job, as he always does.

David, did you anticipate it was going to fall out as it is falling out?

DAVID GERGEN: I sure as hell never anticipated doing early morning television like this. That's for -- no. I didn't anticipate this. I don't think any of us did. We looked at the polls over the last few weeks. The conventional wisdom was the president gets 48, 49 percent in the final polls, he's not going to get much more than that, maybe 1 percent more in the actual election.

WATSON: Right.

GERGEN: He got way over that and I think that left everyone sort of puzzled. What the heck happened?

I have yet to hear a theory of the case, in effect, for what happened, why it really happened. I mean we have individual states we looked at, we know where he is, but something happened here that's pretty dramatic. And it's -- for the Democrats, it's more than just the candidate. Now, I would make this argument.

The white vote is about 80 percent of the national vote. Bush won by 15 percent. The last time around he won by a much smaller margin. That went up considerably. But the Democrats haven't won a majority of the white vote since 1964, in a presidential election. They haven't won a majority of the national vote, 50 percent or more, since 1976. You know, this is a party that's got some serious questions of how do you get a majority of Americans to support it. It's a big, big question. Since 1994 in the congressional elections, this is the sixth one now, they, in six congressional elections in a row, I don't think they've broken 48.5 percent of the total vote.

WATSON: So here is going to be one of the critiques that we'll hear tomorrow and going forward, assuming the Democrats lose. They'll say for the second time in a row, they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, right? They'll say that Al Gore was coming off a two term Democratic presidency with prosperity, with peace, wouldn't use Bill Clinton well and ultimately won the popular vote but lost that election.

They'll say here came John Kerry with a war that clearly wasn't popular, mixed, at best; with an economy that, while getting better, was still somewhat troubled, and particularly in places like Ohio, where the unemployment rate was higher than the 5.4 percent national average, and still he couldn't ultimately deliver.

And so I think one of the other pieces you're going to hear is are we choosing the wrong candidates? Are we choosing the Ivy League educated, you know, straight, tall and erect guys who ultimately aren't connecting in the way that Bill Clinton did, aren't connecting maybe in the way that a governor from Plains once upon a time did. And I think you're going to hear that critique again that we've got to choose not only policy, but personality going forward.

BLITZER: I don't want to jump ahead, though. We haven't yet projected Ohio. That's going to make all the difference in the world. The only thing we've concluded so far, it's too close to call. We can't call it. It's a green state as far as we're looking at all those numbers. We don't know how many provisional ballots there are out in Ohio. We don't know where they're going to come down and how many will be accepted, how many will go for Bush, how many will go for Kerry.

You're sort of smiling as I'm throwing out all the caveats.

GERGEN: I really appreciate how cautious you've been in all of this, because I think it has leant a precision and sort of a lot of caveats. You know, had you gone with the exit polls, for example, early in the evening, just think how far afield...

(CROSSTALK)

GERGEN: ... the analysis would have been.

But at the same time, I think that the handwriting is clearly on the wall in Ohio and perhaps John Kerry can pull it out. But when you add in the military ballots to the provisional, as you were just saying a few moments ago, it seems extremely unlikely that he can win. It may be theoretically possible, but...

BLITZER: So when they wake up in the morning, and it's now almost the morning, it's almost 5:30 a.m., John Kerry and John Edwards and all their top advisers, their campaign strategists, and they look at Ohio -- and it's all boiling down to Ohio, let's not kid ourselves -- what do you think they're going to do?

GERGEN: I think they have to hear from Ken Blackwell there whether he's going to -- whether, as secretary of state, doesn't he have to, in effect, confirm or certify the results of the election?

WATSON: Right. Right.

GERGEN: If he says tomorrow I'm not going to certify the election, yes, and he concludes that there's more there, then they've got a basis on which they might want to push it on for a while.

WATSON: I thought, too, the other thing they do, David, too, though, is I bet you they go, the Democrats go county by county across those 88 counties...

GERGEN: Right.

WATSON: ... and go did we miss a bunch of ballots, right, given that three quarters of these places were punch card ballots? There's a lot going on. I bet you they'll say let's just fact check everything. Let's double check everything. I bet you that will become part of the equation. So not just the provisional ballots, but that part, too.

GERGEN: I agree with that. But the John Edwards' statement tonight suggested that they're going to give this one more day, not 11 more days.

WATSON: Right.

BLITZER: That's what he said.

GERGEN: Yes, that's right.

BLITZER: If it takes another day.

GERGEN: I think that they ought to push to wrap it up tomorrow.

BLITZER: Let's take a look at that popular vote. Right now, 97 percent of the precincts in the United States reporting -- Bush with 51 percent, Kerry 48 percent, Nader 1 percent. That looks like a pretty good popular victory, 51 percent, a majority, for the president.

As far as the electoral college is concerned, it's very, very close. Let's get those numbers here. It is right behind me.

WATSON: Two fifty...

BLITZER: Two fifty-four for Bush, 252 for Kerry. That looks a lot closer than the popular vote, David.

GERGEN: It sure does. Well, it's, you know, you -- there are little trophies one can keep in one's case. But the fact is, you know, that he can't make it without Ohio. And he's 140,000 votes behind in Ohio. And it's just not clear that those votes are anywhere to be found.

So I would think, Wolf, coming -- I would think he'd want to push to resolve tomorrow.

BLITZER: We'll see what happens tomorrow.

David Gergen, Carlos Watson, it's been a long night for all of us.

We're going to sign off right now. But so much more coverage only beginning here on CNN. Andy Card still expected to make an appearance over at the Reagan Center to speak on behalf of the president. We'll have that live here on CNN.

AMERICAN MORNING begins at 7:00 a.m. eastern. Our entire team will have all of the latest information.

I'll be back later today, 5:00 p.m. Eastern, for "WOLF BLITZER REPORTS," a complete wrap-up of what has happened and what may not yet have happened in this election.

In the meantime, let me throw it over right after a short break to CNN's Carol Costello.

In fact, let's throw it over to Carol Costello right now.

From the Nasdaq market site at Times Square over to the CNN Center in Atlanta -- Carol.

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