[angelize56]

A thread to keep election results all neat and in one place! Good luck Bush and Kerry....may the best man win!

Zogby Final Battleground Results

Nov. 2, 2004

Colorado
Bush 49%
Kerry 47%

Florida
Bush 48%
Kerry 48%

Iowa
Bush 45%
Kerry 50%

Michigan
Bush 46%
Kerry 52%

Minnesota
Bush 45%
Kerry 51%

New Mexico
Bush 48%
Kerry 51%

Nevada
Bush 50%
Kerry 45%

Ohio
Bush 49%
Kerry 43%

Pennsylvania
Bush 46%
Kerry 50%

Wisconsin
Bush 45%
Kerry 51%

[angelize56]

Wisconsin
Bush 45%
Kerry 51%

Baklava: Zogby called all your friends and little old ladies!

[alex_holker]

Originally Posted by angelize56

Florida
Bush 48%
Kerry 48%

Is that the sound of 20,000 lawyers decending on Florida?

Alex

[AKA Arizona]

3 out of 10 not looking good, but then the majority of the real working class have not voted yet.......

[DiSaidSo]

Originally Posted by alex_holker

Is that the sound of 20,000 lawyers decending on Florida?

Alex

Hehehe

I think another race we need to be updated on is the electoral college reform vote in Colorado.

Colorado is the new Florida! Maybe.

[deh]

Take this with a grain of salt. Figured i'd put a little "scare" into the Reps. Obviously the source is mega liberal. I think bman was listed as the editor.

Sen. John Kerry looks to make a clean victory of the electoral college, according to exit polls conducted by a consortium of six media organizations (the National Election Pool) that RAW STORY has acquired and confirmed with myriad sources.


Exit polls typically favor Republicans in early voting, as Republicans by-and-large tend to vote earlier in the day. This may spell bad news for President Bush, though it’s also important to consider that early polls are routinely unreliable.

The polls put Kerry ahead in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Wisconsin. In the polls received, Bush leads in Colorado, Louisiana and Arizona. Iowa is a tie.

Here are the first exit polls, confirmed from sources in both parties, as leaked to RAW STORY. The first number is the percentage of voters supporting Kerry, the second are those supporting Bush.

AZ 45-55
CO 48-51
LA 42-57
MI 51-48
WI 52-48
PA 60-40
OH 52-48
FL 51-48

Correction: The second set of poll are also from the consortium (we said earlier they were from the Kerry camp). These show similar trends, also suggesting the senator will will New Mexico and New Hampshire.

MICH 51-47
NM 50-48
MINN 58-40
WISC 52-43
IOWA 49-49
NH 57-41

The latest exit poll in a highly contested Senate race puts Sen. Tom Daschle (D) behind Republican challenger John Thune back three points. Full numbers are not yet available.

[angelize56]

deh: Good thing you corrected my state of MI! My relatives haven't all gotten on their buses to the polls to vote yet!

[angelize56]

I still think Bush is going to win!

Originally Posted by angelize56

I still think Bush is going to win!

Me too!

[angelize56]

Bush vote improves after a shaky start

03nov04

EARLY vote projections are pointing to a close contest as George W. Bush's vote has recovered from some early wobbles in the eastern states.

The President is on course to win an armful of Midwestern and southern states including Kansas and Texas and is polling strongly in the key toss-up states of Ohio and Florida.
I
n early counting Virginia and South Carolina, which Bush won comfortably in 2000, were too close to call. Both are now likely to go to the President, though the uncertainty may have been a warning of what may lie ahead in tighter states.

There have been no shocks so far. Senior aides to Democratic challenger John Kerry claimed their side was ahead in Pennsylvania, the third of the pivotal "battlegrounds" that could decide the outcome.

Up to 120 million people were expected to vote in the first presidential contest since the September 11, 2001 attacks, capping the longest and costliest campaign in US history that focused on terrorism and the war in Iraq.

Long lines of voters were reported across the country. Some queued for hours to cast their ballots for the Republican President or his challenger.

Experts said the high turnout could benefit Senator Kerry, and US stocks turned negative after Internet reports cited what they said were pirated exit polls that suggested a strong early showing for the Senator from Massachusetts.

Opinion polls had shown the race deadlocked both nationwide and in the states, where the two sides fought to piece together a majority of the 538 all-important electoral votes awarded in separate, mostly winner-take-all, contests.

A close race in Virginia, which Bush won in 2000 by 8 points, and South Carolina, which went Republican by nearly 16 points, spelled trouble for the President.

Other states broke as expected, according to US networks citing exit polls and early returns in the race, which ended with both candidates expressing confidence about the final result.

"I know I've given it my all," Mr Bush said as he voted in the fire station in his hometown of Crawford, Texas, accompanied by his wife Laura and twin daughters.

"This election is in the hands of the people and I feel very comfortable about that," Mr Bush said. "The issue is, who do you trust? Who do you trust to secure this country? ... People know where I stand."

The President later attended a get-out-the-vote event in Columbus, Ohio before returning to Washington to wait for the results at the White House.

Mr Bush and Senator Kerry stressed the need for an early, definitive result to avoid any repetition of the 2000 election debacle that hinged on a fierce recount dispute in Florida that was settled by the US Supreme Court 36 days after election day.

"I think it's very important for it to end tonight," Mr Bush said. "The world watches our great democracy function and (there would) be nothing better for our system for the election to be conclusively over tonight."

While a reported one million volunteers on each side scrambled to get out the vote, thousands of Republican and Democratic lawyers waited in the wings poised to mount legal challenges in case of a disputed result.

"I hope there aren't challenges. I hope America will vote according to the law today," Kerry said after voting in Boston with his two daughters, Alexandra and Vanessa.

Some claims of irregularities surfaced in Florida with several voters complaining they had received phone calls or flyers sending them to the wrong polling precincts.

Like Mr Bush, Senator Kerry broke with tradition to hold an early election day campaign event in Wisconsin.

"We're going to link hands and hearts and we're going to take America to a better place," Senator Kerry told 250 supporters in the town of La Crosse. "Let's get the job done."

US voters also decided the composition of Congress, where Republicans are defending a slim Senate majority, but are heavily favoured to keep control of the House of Representatives.

The first election in 30 years to be held with US troops fighting abroad, has boiled down to a heated debate over the 2003 invasion of Iraq and a question of who could keep America safer from terrorists.

It pitted candidates with sharply contrasting styles, temperaments and political philosophies.

Mr Bush, 58, the born-again Christian son of ex-president George H.W. Bush, campaigned as a "war president" ready to take the US into battle alone if necessary to safeguard the country.

The 60-year-old Senator Kerry, a decorated Vietnam war veteran, took a more nuanced stand, preaching the need to repair alliances rent by the Iraq war and reconstruct an international consensus on the global war against terrorism.

Mr Bush called Iraq the central front in the anti-terror war; Kerry branded it a dangerous diversion. The president saw democracy on the march; his opponent saw Iraq descending into chaos.

With the US job market still fragile and Mr Bush's economic policies under attack, security was Bush's strong suit as he relentlessly derided Senator Kerry as weak and waffling on defence.

But some late polls showed his once-substantial lead on the issue eroding amid more bad news from Iraq and the dramatic re-emergence of al-Qieda chief Osama bin Laden on videotape last Friday.

Eric Davis, a political scientist at the University of Middlebury in Vermont, said a higher turnout rate would help Kerry as it would reflect a large number of younger and new voters who had been heavily courted by the Democrats.

If the upper estimate of 120 million voters pans out, it would represent a percentage to compare with the record 63.1 per cent turnout in 1960.

In 2000, 106 million, or 51.3 per cent, of Americans voted.

Senator Kerry had to win two out of three in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania to have a chance at the presidency. For Mr Bush, the loss of two would make it difficult but not impossible to reach the threshold of 270 electoral votes.

The rancorous tone of the election campaign was evident among those voters who said their choice of candidate had been motivated by disgust of the alternative.

"I would vote for anyone who is running against George W. Bush," said Allen Strickler, a law enforcement official in Columbus, Ohio, who went for Senator Kerry.

"Kerry just gives me the creeps," said Cindy Dequenne, 32, waiting to vote for the President in another Columbus precinct. "He's a fake. I don't trust him."

[angelize56]

Hi Kath!

Hi Marlene!

[angelize56]

Election results from the West, at a glance
The Associated Press

Tuesday, November 2, 2004

ALASKA:

PRESIDENT (3) -- Bush. Only one Democrat has taken Alaska since it became a state -- Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

SENATE -- Republican Lisa Murkowski took early lead against former governor Tony Knowles; many Alaskans upset her father, Frank Murkowski, appointed her to his old job when he became governor in 2002.

HOUSE -- Current: 1R. Incumbent Don Young won 17th term against token opposition.

PROPOSITIONS -- Ballot measure, fueled by Murkowski controversy, to eliminate appointments to fill Senate vacancies; others would legalize marijuana and ban bear baiting.

EXIT POLL -- About two-thirds of voters said they thought governor's appointment of his daughter was inappropriate.

ARIZONA:

PRESIDENT (10) -- Bush captured state that had been viewed as battleground early on -- partly because Clinton won here in 1996. Kerry had withdrawn advertising dollars and workers as Bush moved ahead.

SENATE -- John McCain in a landslide; Democratic eighth-grade math teacher Stuart Starky was no match for a Republican incumbent with broad bipartisan appeal.

HOUSE -- Remains 6R, 2D. In expensive, nasty campaign, freshman Republican Rick Renzi soundly defeated Democrat Paul Babbitt, brother of former Interior Secretary and ex-Gov. Bruce Babbitt.

PROPOSITIONS -- Voters okayed measure aimed at denying illegal immigrants certain government services; state workers who fail to report undocumented aliens could face jail time.

EXIT POLL -- Preliminary figures showed nearly half the state's Kerry votes were cast against the president rather than for the senator.

CALIFORNIA:

PRESIDENT (55) -- Biggest pot of electoral votes went to Kerry; Bush lost in 2000 by 12 points.

SENATE -- Barbara Boxer swept past Republican Bill Jones, who was unable to raise money or gain strong support from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

HOUSE -- 33D, 20R. Only one incumbent leaving: Democrat Cal Dooley. Former state Sen. Jim Costa favored over Republican state Sen. Roy Ashburn to replace him.

PROPOSITIONS -- Sixteen ballot issues included two expensive casino gambling initiatives, both rejected, and one that would roll back "three strikes" sentencing law. Voters agreed to let the state sell $3 billion in bonds to pay for embryonic stem cell research.

EXIT POLL -- In 2000 election, about one in seven voters was between ages of 18 and 29. This year, it was more than one in five.

COLORADO:

PRESIDENT (9) -- Bush managed relatively comfortable victory after some late polls suggested Democrats could take the state for just the third time in 50 years.

SENATE -- The Democrats picked up a Senate seat -- state Attorney General Ken Salazar narrowly topped Republican beer baron Peter Coors in one of the most closely watched races in the country. GOP Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell is retiring.

HOUSE -- 5R, 2D. Race pitting Democrat John Salazar, the attorney general's brother, against Republican Greg Walcher was too close to call.

PROPOSITIONS -- Voters rejected measure to scrap winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes and divide them based on popular vote.

EXIT POLL -- Three-fourths of voters who said Iraq was the top issue supported Kerry, while eight in ten who said moral values were most important voted for Bush.

HAWAII:

PRESIDENT (4) -- Surprise, surprise: Hawaii, in Democratic corner every election but two since gaining statehood, became a battleground at end of campaign.

SENATE -- Veteran Sen. Daniel Inouye, 80, won lopsided race against Republican Cam Cavasso, a former state legislator.

HOUSE -- 2D. Reps. Neil Abercrombie and Ed Case breezed to re-election.

PROPOSITIONS -- Four constitutional amendments on ballot, all relating to crime and criminal prosecution. State attorney general and the Honolulu prosecutor backed them; opponents said they would infringe on civil rights.

EXIT POLL -- Nearly one-third of voters said their vote for president was mainly a vote against their candidate's opponent. Of those voters, about eight out of 10 backed Kerry.

IDAHO:

PRESIDENT (4) -- Bush triumphed in a state where only a quarter of residents identify themselves as Democrats.

SENATE -- GOP incumbent Michael Crapo coasted to re-election with no Democratic opponent.

HOUSE -- 2R. Republican incumbent Butch Otter won re-election in what is widely seen as tuneup for a 2006 gubernatorial run.

EXIT POLLS -- In a state where 1,600 guard members are preparing to deploy to Iraq later this year, two-thirds support Bush on the war. A fifth of voters describing themselves as liberals voted for Bush.

MONTANA:

PRESIDENT (3) -- Bush, handily.

GOVERNOR -- Democrat Brian Schweitzer edged Republican Bob Brown for office GOP has held for 16 years.

HOUSE -- 1R. Rep. Denny Rehberg easily beat Democratic challenger Tracy Velazquez.

PROPOSITIONS -- Initiative failed to overturn 6-year-old voter-approved ban on using cyanide in mining operations. In others, voters banned gay marriage, legalized medical marijuana.

EXIT POLL -- Majority across all age groups rejected same-sex marriage, embraced medical marijuana.

NEVADA:

PRESIDENT (5) -- Democrats had slight lead in early voting turnout; Bush won by 3.5 points in 2000.

SENATE -- Democratic incumbent Harry Reid, Senate minority whip, trounced Republican challenger Richard Ziser.

HOUSE -- 2R, 1D. Former casino executive Tom Gallagher, a Democrat, challenged first-term Rep. Jon Porter.

PROPOSITIONS -- Dueling efforts to change medical malpractice laws. Other items would increase public education funding and minimum wage.

EXIT POLL -- Newcomers to Nevada had a strong say -- about one in five voters said they'd moved to the state in the past four years.

NEW MEXICO:

PRESIDENT (5) -- Al Gore won in 2000 by only 366 votes, so both parties smelled blood -- Bush visited New Mexico seven times this year, Kerry eight.

HOUSE -- 2R, 1D. Democrat Richard Romero challenging Rep. Heather Wilson, for second consecutive time in intensely negative campaign.

PROPOSITIONS -- For second time, Albuquerque voters considered bond issue that included $8.7 million to build a road passing through Petroglyphs National Monument, site American Indians consider sacred.

OREGON:

PRESIDENT (7) -- Kerry took state in all-mail balloting.

SENATE -- Heavily favored Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden easily beat little-known Republican newcomer Al King.

HOUSE -- 4D, 1R. Republican Goli Ameri quickly focused TV ads on October newspaper report that Rep. David Wu tried to force a girlfriend to have sex in the 1970s.

PROPOSITIONS -- Foes of proposed constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage claimed they had realistic chance of defeating measure.

EXIT POLL -- Women, Hispanics strongly favored Kerry.

UTAH:

PRESIDENT (5) -- President Bush claimed an easy victory.

SENATE -- Two-term Republican Sen. Bob Bennett coasted to a third term, defeating Democrat Paul Van Dam, a former attorney general.

GOVERNOR -- Republican Jon Huntsman Jr., trade official under President Bush and heir to chemical fortune, beat underdog Scott Matheson, scion of the state's most prominent Democratic family.

HOUSE -- 2R, 1D. Matheson's brother, Rep. Jim Matheson, was favored in rematch against 2002 opponent John Swallow.

PROPOSITIONS -- Voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, despite vigorous opposition from critics who said it would endanger Utah's common-law marriage statute.

OTHER -- Democrat Peter Corroon well-positioned to win Salt Lake County mayor's office after the fall of incumbent Republican Nancy Workman, who quit the race amid felony charges of misusing public money.

EXIT POLL -- Nearly 70 percent of those interviewed said they supported Bush's decision to go to war.

WASHINGTON:

PRESIDENT (11) -- Kerry kept Democratic string going with the fifth straight Democratic presidential win.

SENATE -- Two-term Democratic Sen. Patty Murray turned back GOP challenger George Nethercutt after divisive, expensive campaign.

GOVERNOR -- In race to succeed Democratic Gov. Gary Locke, Attorney General Christine Gregoire led Dino Rossi, Republican businessman and former state senator.

HOUSE -- 6D, 3R. Toughest race, for the open 8th, pitted Republican Dave Reichert, hero sheriff who hunted down the Green River Killer, versus Democrat Dave Ross, syndicated radio talk show host.

PROPOSITIONS -- Voters rejected a penny-on-the-dollar sales tax increase to raise money for education and turned down a proposal to allow state-funded charter schools.

EXIT POLLS -- First-time voters and state's youngest voters split evenly for Bush and Kerry.

WYOMING:

PRESIDENT (3) -- Bush by a landslide in Cheney's home state.

HOUSE -- 1R. Republican Barbara Cubin beat political newcomer Ted Ladd for sixth term as Wyoming's lone representative.

PROPOSITIONS -- Voters rejected constitutional amendment to allow Legislature to put caps on medical malpractice damage awards.

EXIT POLL -- One quarter of registered Democrats voted for Bush.

[angelize56]

Bush nears US election victory
November 3, 2004 - 6:29PM

US President George W Bush has moved to the verge of victory over Democrat John Kerry and re-election to a second term in the White House.

But questions over provisional ballots in Ohio threaten to delay a final verdict.

Two television networks projected Bush would win Ohio, but three others did not.

CNN declared Ohio was too close to call and warned that a result could be a longtime coming.

Kerry campaign aides said they would not concede the state until all Ohio votes, including an unknown number of provisional ballots, were counted.

Without a win in Ohio, Kerry would need to win Nevada, a state won by Bush in 2000, and hold all of the remaining states won by Democrat Al Gore in 2000 to manage a 269-269 electoral tie.

That would throw the race to the Republican-led House of Representatives, where Bush would be almost certain to win.

Bush captured Florida, the biggest of the toss-up battleground states, and rolled up wins across the country to move to the edge of victory.

Kerry won Pennsylvania's 21 electoral votes but New Hampshire was the only state won by Bush in the bitter 2000 election that he had captured.

Heavy turnout was reported nationwide and few major voting glitches were recorded in the final act of a presidential campaign marked by deep divisions between Bush and Kerry over the war in Iraq, the fight against terrorism and the economy.

Dire predictions of voter challenges and election chaos mostly did not come true in an election where turnout was expected to sail well past the 105 million Americans who voted in 2000.

With 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House, Bush had captured 28 states with 269 electoral votes if Ohio was counted in his column. Kerry won 15 states and 207 votes.

Among the remaining battleground states still to be decided at 6 pm AEDT were Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Iowa, Hawaii and New Mexico.

Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill said in a statement that "the vote count in Ohio has not been completed. There are more than 250,000 remaining votes to be counted. We believe when they are, John Kerry will win Ohio."

An unknown number of those votes were provisional ballots issued to voters when their registration was challenged.

Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell said those votes would not be counted for 11 days.

"If the number of votes that make up the difference between the two candidates is fewer than the number of provisional ballots, then I would say everybody should just take a deep breath and relax because we're not going to start counting those ballots until the 11th day after the election," he said on CNN.

Bush's projected win in Florida, where his brother Jeb is governor, gave him a giant boost in his bid for re-election and added 27 electoral votes to his column.

Voters also were deciding which party holds power in Congress and will vote on governorships in 11 states, with Bush's Republicans retaining control of the Senate and House of Representatives.

Republicans picked up Senate seats in North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina and Louisiana, and Democrats picked up seats in Illinois and Colorado.

A few disputes broke out in key swing states as officials began to count ballots.

A Philadelphia judge blocked the counting of up to 12,000 absentee ballots in the city until he holds a hearing on Wednesday after a complaint brought by the Republican Party.

Thousands of people were still in line waiting to vote more than two hours after the polls closed in Ohio, and officials said they would be allowed to stay in line as long as they were there at closing time.

Bush won one-time battlegrounds like West Virginia, Arizona and Missouri and Kerry took New Jersey while both candidates scored a series of wins in states where they were prohibitive favourites.

Bush and Kerry cast votes in their home states of Texas and Massachusetts, respectively, earlier in the day then settled in for a long night of watching and waiting.

Bush, who watched the results in the White House with his family, including his father, former President George Bush, said he was confident of victory.

"We're very upbeat, thank you," Bush told reporters. "I believe I will win."

Kerry, watching the results in his hometown of Boston, did not make an appearance before reporters but sent out aides to predict a win.

Officials in Florida, site of the bitterly disputed 2000 recount that ultimately handed the White House to Bush, reported long lines but no early voting problems.

In Ohio, Republicans backed away from threats to challenge voter qualifications inside polling stations.

US oil prices rebounded sharply from early lows on speculation that Bush would be re-elected.

The lingering bitterness over that election, when Bush lost the popular vote to Democrat Al Gore but narrowly won the Electoral College after the US Supreme Court stopped a vote recount in Florida, fuelled Democratic get-out-and-vote efforts this year.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Breaki...?oneclick=true

[angelize56]

With Echoes of 2000 Vote, Ohio Count Is at Issue
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Published: November 3, 2004

President Bush swept to an apparent popular-vote victory over Senator John Kerry last night, and seemed headed toward winning enough Electoral College votes to assure his re-election.

But in what was shaping up as a Midwest replay of 2000, Mr. Kerry's campaign challenged the results in Ohio and said it would not abandon the campaign until all the votes in that critical state were counted.

Mr. Bush's aides said early this morning that they were convinced that he had won Ohio which, combined with his victory in Florida, would guarantee him a second term. But at 2:30 this morning, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, Mr. Kerry's running mate, made a brief and dramatic appearance in front of a huge crowd of supporters at Copley Square in Boston to announce that he and Mr. Kerry would not concede.

"It's been a long time - but we've waited four years for this victory,'' he said to thousands of people who earlier had been expecting Mr. Kerry to be delivering a victory speech on that very spot. "We can wait one more night."

In what sounded like a hint of concerted legal action ahead, Mr. Edwards added tersely: "John Kerry and I made a promise to the American people that in this election, every vote would count and every vote would be counted. Tonight, we are keeping our word."

As of 2 a.m. this morning, Mr. Bush had 2,685,059 votes, compared with 2,564,047 for Mr. Kerry, or an edge of 121,012 votes. Mr. Kerry's aides said that they believed the vote could be turned around once provisional ballots - those submitted by people who were unable to vote because their names not on registration rolls - had been tallied.

"The vote count in Ohio has not been completed,'' said Mary Beth Cahill, Mr. Kerry's campaign manager. "There are more than 250,000 remaining votes to be counted. We believe when they are, John Kerry will win Ohio."

The dispute provided a chaotic conclusion to a long gyrating night of counting that vividly recalled the turmoil of four years ago. In addition to the problem in Ohio, Iowa officials said that they would do a recount in that state, where Mr. Bush had a lead of 11,000 with 94 percent of the vote counted.

An evening of confusion - and deflation for Mr. Kerry's aides and Democrats across the country - caused in no small part by surveys of voters leaving the polls, which showed Mr. Kerry leading Mr. Bush by as much as 3 percentage points nationally. With 86 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Bush was leading Mr. Kerry 51 percent to 48 percent.

Americans turned out in big numbers to vote, according to officials from both parties, lining up at polling places across the country - from Ohio to Florida, from New York to Minnesota - in an evocative conclusion to one of the most emotionally charged campaigns in a century.

Polls taken up to the eve of the election showed Mr. Bush tied with Mr. Kerry, and party officials suggested that the turnout in this hard-fought election could match the modern-day record of 63 percent set in 1960. In Ohio, lines were so long that some polling places stayed open past the 7:30 p.m. closing time.

One in seven people who voted yesterday did not participate in the 2000 election, and 60 percent of those voters said they supported Mr. Kerry, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls. And throughout the day, Republicans appeared concerned by the images of long lines of Americans waiting to vote, particularly in cities and in areas with large numbers of minority voters. A survey of voters leaving the polls suggested that the turnout was at least partly inspired by anger among Democrats lingering from Mr. Bush's disputed victory in 2000.

But White House officials said they remained confident that the Republicans' own turnout effort - aimed at evangelical Christians who Mr. Bush's advisers believed had failed to vote in 2000 - would counter the opposition to Mr. Bush, and prevent him from facing the fate of his father, who lost re-election to Bill Clinton in 1992.

Mr. Bush won Florida, seizing one of the big three states that have become the focus of both parties for much of the year and the state that was at the emotional fulcrum of the battle of 2000. Mr. Kerry won the second of those three states, Pennsylvania, and the two men were engaged in what could well prove to be a climactic fight in Ohio.