u.s. presidential election 2004

For past 4 hours, I've been watching the election coverages of CNN, ABC, BBC and NHK. This year's presidential election seems to be closer than the one that took place 4 years ago. From the reflection of last election's impetuosity, all of the TV networks, especially American ones are being really precautious about giving out results from a predictable level.

Especially, Ohio. Even though the ballots count have finished in 94% of the precincts, they're not giving out the final result for the state. CNN had given out a "Green State", or "Too Close To Call" for Ohio for the first time since it's establishment. On the other hand, Nippon Television, based on NBC's call, said Ohio went to Bush, making Bush's electoral count to 269, but from what I'm seeing, there seems to be a 100,000 count difference between the two candidates, with about 500,000 votes yet to be counted. Yes, it's too early. By the way, the state I used to live in, New Jersey went for Kerry. New Jersey had always been a Democratic state, on a nationwide level. Well, the governor who was in office when I lived there, Governor Christine Todd Whitman was a Republican though. I'm not sure which party the current governor McGreevy is in...he's supposed to resign soon from his "confesssion".

Anyway, this map of nationwide distribution of support is really interesting to look at. In the United States, the Democratic Party's the liberal one, while the Republican Party's the conservative one. Urban areas had supported the Democrats, while rural areas had supported the Republicans for the past 50 years of so. The minorities tend to favor the Democrats. From this map, we can see that the Democrats won in the North-Eastern region, Pacific Coast Region, Illinois and Minnesota; the regions with large metropolises, such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

I think that the same trend was seen in the last House of Councillers election in Japan too. The conservative Liberal Democratic Party did terrible in the urban areas, while the Democratic Party did well. On the other hand, there were much more consistuencies that went for the LDP numberwise. We can definately say that the Republicans are winning from the information we see from this map, but with the electoral system in place, the more populous state the candidate gets, the more likely he or she wins.

In my opinion, if I had still been living in the States now, I'd go for Kerry, but considering the fact that I'm living in Japan now, I assume the Bush/Koizumi pair would be better for Japan's national interests. However, on a worldwide basis, things could go better off with Kerry...who knows? On a fundamental level, I would've wanted better candidates though...