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Today, 22 November 2009

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Yesterday, 21 November 2009

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President George W. Bush late Tuesday won Florida, the pivotal state that secured his 2000 victory after five weeks of legal battles and took centerstage of the presidential campaigns in recent days.

The southeastern state is seen as a juicy prize as it has 27 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

With most of the votes counted, Bush had 52 percent of the vote and a five-point lead over his Democratic rival John Kerry, according to results compiled by Florida electoral authorities, who said the vote went smoothly, despite isolated glitches and claims of dirty tricks.

Significant gains in 'I-4 corridor'

Analysts attributed the Republican president's stronger than expected lead to significant gains he made in an area of central Florida known after the I-4 highway that crosses it east to west.

"The I-4 corridor went mainly Bush," said Susan McManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida, adding that much of that support came from white families.

"The Republicans did achieve one of their goals, which was to increase votes from social conservatives," she said.

Both camps had also actively courted Hispanic and Jewish voters, while the Democrats went all-out to energise their black supporters.

"This is one of the happiest days in my life," said Sid Dinerstein, who heads the Republican Party in Palm Beach county, where he has battled for weeks to woo Jewish voters away from the Democrats.

Bush gained Jewish vote

"We turned out the Jewish vote like never before in Florida," he told AFP. The 500 000 Jewish voters had traditionally sided with the Democrats, but Dinerstein said Bush's strong pro-Israel policies enabled the Republicans to make major gains in that community.

On the other hand, the Democrats believe they managed to sway a number of votes from the Cuban-American community, once a monolithic Republican voter bloc, which counts about 450 000 registered voters.

"There's been a significant shift there," said Joe Garcia who recently quit as head of the influential Cuban American National Foundation to help increase Hispanic support for the Democrats.

He said the Democrats also gained important support from non-Cuban Hispanics, but not enough to offset Bush's gains in central Florida.

The Democrats had also initially hoped Kerry would benefit from the strong turnout that marked Tuesday's voting, and the early voting in the two weeks before that.

A few glitches

A few glitches, including power outages, malfunctioning machines and polling places opening late were reported during the voting.

But electoral observers were most worried about absentee ballots many voters apparently did not receive in time, as well as reported attempts to keep some voters away from the polls.

Though on a smaller scale, the complaints brought to mind some of the problems that marred the 2000 election, when legal wrangling held up the outcome for 36 days until the US Supreme Court halted recounts, leaving Bush with a 536-vote lead in Florida that secured his presidential victory.

Misleading phone calls and flyers

Voters, mainly in traditionally Democratic-voting black areas, said they had received phone calls or flyers sending them to wrong precincts, or even telling them they were not registered to vote.

"Voters are lighting up our phone lines in response to these calls," said Theresa LePore, the head electoral official in Palm Beach county.

"It's terrible," she told journalists in a West Palm Beach retirement community where she watched on as voters cast their ballots at a synagogue.

Palm Beach was the focus of much of the controversy in the last presidential election, when confusing ballots caused elderly Jewish supporters of Democrat Al Gore to mistakenly vote for far-right long shot Pat Buchanan, whose views some consider anti-Semitic.

Thousands of lawyers and other volunteers monitored the vote across the state.

AFP