It's not over yet.
While many papers went to press hours ago with their best guess at how the election turned out, the official results remain unknown.
It was originally announced Bush had emerged victorious in the key state of Florida, clinching the Electoral College majority needed for election. Gore went so far as to make a call to his Republican rival conceeding defeat. However, after additional uncertainty arose in the Florida voting returns, the vice president made a second call retracting his concession. A recount will begin in a couple of hours. No matter how the new count shakes out, this is unquestionably one of the closest and most unusual presidential elections in U.S. history.
In another twist, strong showings in west coast states, notably California, have given Gore the lead in the popular vote. The vice president will likely accumulate more votes nationally than his opponent and yet, may lose the presidency in the electoral college vote.
As has seemingly been the case all evening long, the outcome of the election rests with Florida. Though Bush won the first count, some sources cite Bush's margin of victory as being just a few hundred votes. For their part, the Bush campaign continues to tentatively claim victory.
Should the results hold, George W. Bush will apparently be the next president of the United States.
It would be the second time in history a father and son have become president, the first being John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams.
With the race still neck in neck, both parties eagerly anticipate who would win one of the closest races since the 1960 John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon presidential election.
Early Tuesday evening, Bush had 217 electoral votes and Gore stood at 172 electoral votes. At the start of the election returns Bush had a sizable lead with Gore, who only had Vermont. Gore then took Illinois and Maine which helped him catch up to Bush.
All the major networks initially declared Al Gore winning Florida's 25 electoral votes. Later in the evening, the networks withdrew their predictions as vote counts revealed a much closer race than expected.
Absentee ballots were cited as on of the reasons for the state not being given to any one candidate. It was previously estimated that 500,000 absentee ballots were outstanding. However, by the end of the evening that count went to approximately one million.
One state whose outcome was known immediately was Tennessee. Bush won Gore's home state, a rare occurrence in electoral history.
At 11:15 p.m. Gore and Bush were tied with 242 electoral votes each. In total there are 538 electoral votes. The candidate who gets 270 electoral votes, wins the presidency.
Jon Carroll, a 23-year-old senior, majoring in political science, was feeling upbeat early in the evening that his candidate, Al Gore would win the election. Carroll is the president of The U of M Campus Democrats.
"We fought a good battle, we did our best," he said.
Even if Gore ends up losing, Carroll feels confident that the Democratic Party will not stay down for long.
"We will get back the presidency in 2004."
Although Gore supporters are disappointed by the possibility of his defeat, many were comforted by the fact there is very little chance Bush would be able to enact some of the more conservative planks in his platform.
Election experts say that Bush will have to govern from the middle because of the closeness of the election and the almost equal party division of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
It remains unclear when Florida will announce the results of its recount.
