Bush's Triumph: 2004 Election: In Victory's Glow

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For weeks, both campaigns had suspected it could all come down to Ohio, a state no Republican has ever lost and still won the White House. More than two-thirds of precincts were using punch-card ballots, with their potentially hanging chads. So Democrats acquired 611 punch-card machines, some of them discarded from Florida and Michigan and others found on eBay, so volunteers could hold little seminars outside key precincts on how to vote correctly. Republicans dispatched vote counters to every county election board so they would give the campaign an early read about where Bush might be lagging. Back at campaign headquarters in Washington, the information streamed toward operatives sitting at laptops watching their maps change color. A county colored blue meant that Bush was doing better than he had in 2000. The Ohio map just kept getting more blue. In some places it bled dark blue, almost purple, indicating areas where Republicans had improved 10% from four years ago.

Three times over the course of the day, poll watchers from both parties could enter precincts and scan the lists of voters to see who had turned out and who had not. Then they called their war rooms so volunteers--the Republicans called them flushers--could call the voters who hadn't yet cast a ballot, give a pep talk, offer a ride. In Franklin County the board of elections handed out more than 800 cell phones to the nonpartisan precinct judges there so they could call the board to report any problems or ask questions. In the end "the good people of central Ohio have kept their cool heads," said Doug Preisse, chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party.

Remaining cool through the night was a little harder for the candidates. Bush was with his father in the White House residence, having highly technical conversations about turnout models by phone with campaign manager Ken Mehlman. Bush wanted to know who was on talk radio making his case and whether everything was being done to win every possible vote. "He's like a political director who is President," said a Bush official. Once it was clear that the early rumors of a Kerry sweep were all wrong, the networks were playing it very safe about calling states. The job of declaring who would be the next President--and when the country might know--would fall to the campaigns.

In the old family dining room of the residence, Rove set up his computers. Bush called him regularly to ask about what was happening in certain precincts and districts. Finally, after midnight, the President was on the phone with his communications director, Dan Bartlett, discussing Ohio. Bartlett explained why the networks would be reluctant to call the key swing state. Bush then said, "Well, they just called it," although only NBC and Fox had. The room erupted into cheers. Bartlett held out the phone so Bush could hear. "Congratulations, Mr. President," Bartlett said, "You won the presidency." But it would be nearly 15 more hours before the President could come out and say so himself.

Bush was ahead in Ohio by 130,000 votes. But about the same number of provisional ballots--given to voters whose eligibility had been challenged--remained unopened. In elections gone by, that gap would still have been enough to put the state in Bush's column, but most networks exercised uncharacteristic caution.