Just to point out where we are with the U.S. Presidential election, Kerry and Edwards are not conceeding the election because they feel as though they still have a chance to win Ohio when all of the provisional ballots are counted. Given that Bush will almost certainly win one or both of the remaining undeclared states (Iowa and New Mexico), whichever candidate actually won Ohio will be the next President of the United States.

Let’s do some quick math to see what this means:

With 100% of the precincts in Ohio reporting, Bush currently has 2,794,346 votes. Kerry has 2,658,125 votes, which means Bush’s lead is 136,221.

In the Democrats’ most optimistic estimate, there are 250,000 outstanding provisional ballots and they are all valid. (In 2000, only 90% of the Ohio provisional ballots turned out to be valid.) In order to win in this scenario, Kerry would need to get 193,111 of the 250,000 votes in order to win in Ohio. This is a margin of ~77.24%.

In the Republicans’ most optimistic estimate, there are 175,000 outstanding provisional ballots and only 90% of them are valid. In order to win in this scenario, Kerry would need to get 146,861 of the 157,500 votes in order to win Ohio. This is a margin of ~93.25%.

Assuming the truth is somewhere in the middle, Kerry probably needs ~85% of the provisional ballots to win. In Kerry’s best county in Ohio (Cuyahoga), he only managed to get ~67% of the vote.

So why does the Kerry campaign think such a huge margin of victory is possible among those voters who cast provisional ballots? In Ohio, provisional ballots come in two flavors - absentee ballots and ballots for voters whose eligibility to vote could not be immediately verified (usually because they showed up at the wrong polling place).

The Democrats think that the overwhelming majority of provisional ballots are from young, first-time voters that support Kerry, and these voters made a rookie mistake of showing up at a precinct other than the one where they were registered.

The Republicans, however, agree that some of the provisional ballots are from first-time voters, but counter-claim that first-time voters aren’t necessarily young nor do they necessarily support Kerry. The ballot initiative in Ohio to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman helped motivate a lot of churches to get their members registered, and the Republicans claim that there are as many or more of these religiously motivated (and implicitly Republican) first-time voters than there are of the young Kerry supporters - a plausible theory given the age 18-29 turnout cited in other states. To add more weight to their claim, the Republicans also feel as though they have an edge in the absentee provisional ballots, since many of Ohio’s absentee voters are overseas military personnel who are thought to favor Bush by as much as 2-1. In other words, the Republicans not only disagree that Kerry can get the requisite ~85% of Ohio’s provisional votes, they question whether he can even get 50%.

The bottom line is that the race in Ohio is close enough to justify Kerry’s wait-and-see stance, but mathematically speaking it is incredibly improbable that a full count will work out in Kerry’s favor. (Celebrate or cry as you deem appropriate.)

EDIT: Shortly after I posted this, I learned that the number of provisional ballots in 78 of 88 counties had been counted (i.e. not tallied, just counted to see how many there were) and the total was 135,149. Assuming the same ratio in the other 10 counties and that all of the provisional ballots were valid, there would only be 152,476 valid provisional ballots total for Ohio - Kerry would need to have received 144,349 or an amazing 94.67% of the vote on those ballots to take the presidency. It is little wonder, then, that shortly after these numbers were released, Kerry’s concession to Bush was announced. The United States has elected its next president, and at least we can say that this time it took less than 36 days.