A night like no other in U.S. election history

Republican George W. Bush believed he had won the election shortly after 2 a.m. eastern time when all of the major television networks called the state of Florida for him. The 25 votes swung to the Texas governor and he bounced over the 270 Electoral College votes necessary to claim the presidency.

Vice President Al Gore phoned Bush around 2:30 a.m. to concede the election and congratulate Bush on his victory. Bush reportedly thanked Gore and said he was a formidable opponent and the two candidates "gave the American people a real cliffhanger," according to CNN reporter Candy Crowley paraphrasing the conversation from Austin, Texas.

A victory celebration began in Austin and the news media primed for an historic speech by Bush, who was set to become only the second son of a president to gain the presidency. Ironically, Florida had much earlier in the night been placed in the Gore column by the television projections. The pundits began explaining at that time how difficult it would be for Bush to win without Florida, the state with the third largest number of electoral votes.

Bush had called in news cameras into his hotel room in Austin, where he was seated with his father, former president George Bush and his mother Barbara. He said thought the networks were "wrong" to call Florida for Gore, based on his party's own count of the vote.

Gore had earlier won the two biggest prizes, New York and California, while also capturing Michigan and the northeastern states but not much else. Bush was ahead everywhere else and appeared to be piling up a substantial lead in the popular vote.

The two candidates were on an Electoral College count of 246 for Bush to 249 for Gore when the Florida election was called, putting him over by just one vote. Things became very strange about 45 minutes later when the networks were waiting for Gore to give a concession speech in Nashville, Tennessee. Gore did not appear for about 20 minutes and then the networks dropped a bombshell - Gore had called Bush to retract his earlier concession.

Gore's campaign chairman, William Daley, appeared on the podium to declare there would be a recount of the Florida vote. "Without being certain of the results in Florida, we simply cannot be certain about the results of this national election ... This race is simply too close to call.

"Our campaign continues," Daley told an emotionally drained crowd of Gore supporters at about 4:30 a.m. Meanwhile, the networks pulled Florida back out of the Bush column and a race that was thought over came back to life. The Electoral College count moved back to 260-246 for Gore, with Oregon the last state left that was too close to call.

Florida election officials came out to declare that an automatic recount of the vote would be mandatory since the count was within the 0.5 per cent margin that brings a new accounting under state law. The vote was said to be within 1,200 votes out of nearly six million cast. During the intervening overnight hours, Gore pulled ahead of Bush in the popular vote and widened his lead to more than 250,000 votes out of nearly 95 million cast.

Gore's lead raises the spectre of Bush winning the Electoral College count but losing the popular vote, and effectively having little mandate to govern. A split vote has not occurred in the United States since 1876, essentially in the Pleistocene Era of American politics.

The closest race in recent memory was the 1960 cliffhanger between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. In that race, Kennedy won the popular vote by just 110,000 votes yet captured the Electoral College race by 303 to 219.

After the bizarre night of wild electoral swings, Americans were left to wake up Wednesday morning not knowing who had won their first national election of the new Millennium, or who would be the next president.

(la/dpa)