Bush Nears Magic Number

President Bush is just 21 electoral votes shy of the magic number of 270, according to CBS News estimates. Democrat John Kerry needs to win the crucial battleground state of Ohio if he is to have any chance of ousting Mr. Bush, but a dispute over "provisional ballots" could delay the final vote count in the Buckeye State for several days.

Mr. Bush now has a total of 249 electoral votes, compared to 242 for his Democratic challenger. In the popular vote, Mr. Bush leads Kerry 51 percent to 48 percent.

The Democratic ticket is showing no signs it will concede the election. "We waited four years for this victory, we can wait one more night," said Kerry's running mate Sen. John Edwards in a brief statement early Wednesday morning in Boston.

The White House is confident it has won the race in Ohio, and won the election, reports CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer.

On a big night for Republicans, the GOP also retained control of Congress, winning a string of Senate seats in the South and maintaining their grip on the House of Representatives.

Polls were closed in all 50 states, but a number of states remained too close to project a winner. Ohio, with 20 electoral votes, was the biggest outstanding prize.

However, a result in Ohio may not be forthcoming quickly. There are perhaps 175,000 "provisional votes" still to be counted in the state, which under Ohio law will not be counted for several days, according to Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell.

Also still too close to project a winner are Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Mexico.

Problems with voting machines in some Iowa counties were delaying the ballot count there until manufacturers could investigate.

With one exception, the race has mirrored the 2000 election with Mr. Bush winning all the states he carried four years ago, and Kerry winning all the states former Vice President Al Gore captured. Only New Hampshire has switched camps, going from Mr. Bush in 2000 to Kerry this year.

Mr. Bush swept the South with wins in Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia and Kentucky. He also did well in the West and Midwest, capturing Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, Montana and Alaska.

Kerry dominated the East and Northeast with victories in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, Delaware, Maryland and the District of Columbia, as well as his home state of Massachusetts. He also carried Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota in the Midwest, along with the Western states of California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii.

In the fight for control of the Senate, Democratic State Sen. Barack Obama, a political star in the making, easily captured a formerly Republican seat in Illinois, and will be the only black among 100 senators when the new Congress convenes in January. "I am fired up," he told cheering supporters.

But the GOP grabbed several seats in the South that had been held by Democrats, guaranteeing continued Republican dominance of the upper chamber.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives were up for election, and CBS News estimates the chamber will remain under Republican control.

Eleven gubernatorial contests were also decided Tuesday, along with 5,800 legislative seats in 44 states.

Among the notable ballot measures, 11 states delivered a resounding rejection of same-sex marriage, approving constitutional amendments limiting marriage to one man and one woman.

But the focus was on Kerry's bid to make Mr. Bush the first president voted out of office at a time of war.

"I've given it my all," the president said after voting at a Crawford, Texas, firehouse.

Kerry got teary-eyed as he thanked his staff for a campaign's worth of work. "We made the case for change," he said after voting at the Massachusetts Statehouse.

Early results from exit voting suggest that young people are playing a greater role in this year's presidential race than four years earlier. In 2000, 17 percent of voters nationwide were between the ages of 18 and 29. They broke nearly evenly between the major party candidates, with 48 percent supporting Gore and 46 percent supporting Mr. Bush.

This election the impact appears to be much more striking. Although they have not turned out in greater numbers nationally, they are leaning heavily toward Kerry, giving him a double-digit lead over the president among this age group.

The results are even more dramatic in several key battleground states. Roughly one in five voters in Ohio is under 30, supporting Kerry by roughly 20 percent over Mr. Bush. About one in six voters in Florida are between 18 and 29, leaning toward Kerry by about twenty percentage points. In Pennsylvania, more than 20 percent of voters are under 30, and they break toward Kerry by nearly twenty-five percentage points.

Older people are leaning toward President Bush, seemingly undoing the Democrat Party's historic advantage with this group. In the last three elections, voters 60 and over supported the Democrat nominee. This year, Bush holds a slight advantage with this age group.

CBS News National Exit Poll results are based on interviews with 11,027 voters. The sampling error is plus or minus 1 point. Exit Polls from specific states are based on interviews with at least 1930 voters, and could have a sampling error of as much as plus or minus 2 points.

With polls deadlocked and interest in the race exceptionally high, voter turnout was heavy. Some polls projected Election Day 2004 may see the largest proportion of eligible people voting in a generation.

Long lines were reported at precincts from Florida and North Carolina to West Virginia and Michigan.

"We even had people waiting in line before we opened at 6:30 a.m.," said Wayne County Clerk Robert Pasley in Wayne, W.Va. "In some places, there was more than a dozen people waiting, and that's heavy."

Braced for a replay of the 2000 recount, legions of lawyers and election-rights activists watched for signs of voter fraud or disenfranchisement. New lawsuits sought clearer standards to evaluate provisional ballots in Ohio and a longer deadline to count absentee ballots in Florida.

While complaints were widespread, they weren't significant. "So far, it's no big, but lots of littles," said elections expert Doug Chapin.

"My hope of course is that this election ends tonight," Mr. Bush told reporters, referring to the expected legal challenges in some districts.