Word: margin
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...chance to stir hot soup if it could spill on someone named Bush, went on the air and said he did not think all those votes had been intended for him. With Bush emerging from the initial count with a 1,784-vote lead, this could mean the margin of victory for Gore...
...dilemma. New Presidents who have won less than 50% of the vote--John Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon in 1968, Bill Clinton in 1992--have started out under pressure to conciliate rather than undertake bold partisan ambitions. Bush, as a President tainted by his lack of a popular-vote margin, could be even more inhibited...
...world's greatest economic powerhouse, cradle of the information age, was counting ballots by hand. One hundred million people had voted, and the outcome danced in the margin of error. There were murmurs from all over the country, not just in Florida, of broken voting machines and missing registrations and disappearing ballot boxes and intimidation and confusion, a growing conviction among true believers on both sides that this prize was about to be stolen. The sleep-deprived commentariat talked of a country divided and a constitutional crisis looming, which may not have been true, but it didn't hurt ratings...
Already the pressure was building. By the time the recount was over, Bush's original margin had sagged to a mere 327 votes, but he remained ahead. Prominent Democrats like New Jersey Senator Bob Torricelli and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich called on the Gore campaign not to lawyer the race to death. Editorial pages looked for the Maginot Line...
...counts were unimaginably, unbearably close. Florida was still undecided, but by 1 a.m. the Bush camp had more than a 200,000-vote cushion. Bush staff members knew Dade and Broward counties still hadn't reported, but their models told them they had a lead that was insurmountable. The margin would shrink, but then "it was just a matter of hanging on to the cliff by our fingers," remembers McKinnon. The problem is "each finger kept getting stepped on." He and Ferguson nipped out for a little tequila to calm their nerves. Rove, who was wearing his phone headset...