PHOENIX — It was a night for drinking whiskey rather than champagne at the Arizona Biltmore.
 
As Republican John McCain prepared his concession speech in a private room at the landmark Phoenix hotel, bottles of bubbly were most certainly not being popped in a nearby ballroom where long-faced Republicans were marking time. 
 
The race hadn’t yet been called for Barack Obama, but McCain had already lost Ohio, Pennsylvania and other key battleground states. But the giant TV screens weren’t showing election returns, and many still held out hope.
 
“Tonight as of right now, it’s still too close to call,” Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl told the crowd. “Win or lose, we’re going to have a tough four years ahead of us. We’re going to have to be a firewall against this radical leftist agenda.” 

Software engineer Ken Wharton likewise wasn’t ready to concede defeat.
 
“I’m going to wait until the end. It’s not over until it’s over,” said Wharton, who said he was worried that Obama would cut the military budget and back reparations for slavery.
 
Wedding planner Cynthia Ghelf likewise said she wouldn’t assume the worst until the California polls closed in half an hour. But she already had an escape plan: “I feel like we should move to Canada,” she said.
 
Ghelf’s friend Katie Kiesel, a stay-at-home mom, said she hoped the Republican party would learn to reach out to younger and more moderate voters and cater less to the conservative wing.
 
Others said the party should steer a course to the right. 
 
“He could have been a little more conservative,” Baptist preacher Jim Selma said of McCain. “His best move was appointing Sarah Palin. I think that energized the  base, and when he moved back toward the middle it got boring, I think, for the Republican side.”
 
By that point, officials were urging the partygoers to clear out of the ballroom and head to the hotel’s lawn. Polls on the West Coast were closing soon, and the results would be known quickly. It was time for McCain to speak.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Rick Scuteri (A McCain supporter looks on at McCain concession speech)

WASHINGTON - Fox News was the first television network to project victory in Ohio for Barack Obama on Tuesday, then quickly rescinded it, but minutes later again gave the battleground state to the Democratic presidential candidate.

The call came as Karl Rove, the Republican strategist who helped George W. Bush win two presidential elections, stood silently on screen.

Fox first called the state shortly after its polls closed at 9 p.m., then rescinded its call moments later, saying it had “put the check mark in the wrong place.” Around 9:19 p.m., the network reaffirmed its initial call, joined within minutes by other networks.

Rove, now an analyst for the network, made no immediate comments about the loss of Ohio for Republican presidential candidate John McCain. No Republican has won the White House without carrying Ohio.

But Nicolle Wallace, a McCain campaign adviser, acknowledged to the network that the losses in Ohio and another key state that McCain had hoped to win, Pennsylvania, were bad news.

“We’re hoping for the best, but prepared for the worst,” Wallace said, but added that McCain was known for his dramatic comebacks.

“When you work for John McCain you learn one thing, it’s not over until it’s over,” she said.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama makes calls to voters in Indianapolis)

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

WASHINGTON - Election Day is finally here, the final opinion polls are in and now it’s time for Americans to make their way to the voting booth — but will weather be a factor?

According to the latest forecast maps, most of the country will not have adverse weather conditions, but there could be rain showers in two battleground states.

Good weather historically has helped Democrats.

Virginia, which has voted Republican since 1964, is now a toss-up state between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama and will likely see showers most of the day stretching from Newport News north to the suburbs outside Washington, D.C., and west toward Roanoke.

Parts of North Carolina, a state that has been leaning slightly toward McCain, will experience showers during the morning.

Meanwhile Florida, Ohio, Missouri and Pennsylvania, all battleground states critical to a McCain victory, should be clear. Other key states like Colorado and New Mexico, where Obama hopes to help his cause, are not expected to have bad weather.

Out West, Weather.com reported that showers are expected in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Joe Skipper (Voters in Boca Raton, Fla. line up to vote on Tuesday)

(Corrects third paragraph to say Joe about to buy a business) 

Joe the Plumber was the surprise star of the third and final presidential debate, getting no less than 13 mentions in the opening minutes.

So who is this guy? His full name is Joe Wurzelbacher, and it turns out he had a close encounter with Barack Obama a few days ago. John McCain adopted Joe’s cause as a way to tar his opponent as a tax-and-spend liberal.

The apparent problem is that Joe is about to buy a company that makes a little over $250,000 a year, and under Obama’s proposal that would put him into a higher tax bracket. Obama told Joe that he wasn’t trying to punish his success, only to spread the wealth around.

“Joe wants to buy the business that he has been in for all of these years, worked 10, 12 hours a day. And he wanted to buy the business but he looked at your tax plan and he saw that he was going to pay much higher taxes,” McCain said.

“Joe, I want to tell you, I’ll not only help you buy that business that you worked your whole life for and be able — and I’ll keep your taxes low and I’ll provide available and affordable health care for you and your employees,” McCain said, staring straight into the camera.

McCain got a little caught up in the moment and muddled in his message to Joe by saying at one point that “fifty percent of small business income taxes are paid by small businesses.”

Still, Joe the Plumber has become a bit of Internet celebrity and Republicans quickly latched onto his plight, issuing a statement saying his comments to Joe showed that Obama would “tax to death” the American Dream.

Obama’s response was that Joe the Plumber needed a tax cut five years ago, and Obama wants to “make sure that the plumber, the nurse, the firefighter, the teacher, the young entrepreneur who doesn’t yet have money, I want to give them a tax break now. And that requires us to make some important choices.”

As for Joe himself, directory assistance had no telephone listing for him in Toledo, Ohio. If you’re listening, Joe, we’d love to hear how you’re handling fame!  

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Gary Hershorn (McCain makes a point at the presidential debate)   

WASHINGTON - A slew of new state polls released on Wednesday showed some shift in momentum toward Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and away from Republican rival John McCain.

CNN/Time Magazine/Opinion Research Corp. released polls for five battleground states — Florida, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada and Virginia — that showed Obama ahead among likely voters in all of them, though still within the margin of error in four.

Obama held a 51 percent to 47 percent lead in both Florida and Nevada, a 53 percent to 44 percent lead in Virginia, a 54 percent to 43 percent advantage in Minnesota and a narrow 49 percent to 48 percent edge in Missouri.

CNN said its previous surveys of those states had showed McCain was up in Nevada, Virginia and Missouri. And previously in Florida the two were tied and in Minnesota Obama was up two points.

Meanwhile, new polls by Quinnipiac University in three key states also showed a small uptick in support for Obama after last week’s presidential debate.

In Florida, Obama’s lead grew to 51 percent to 43 percent, from 49 percent to 43 percent before the debate.

In Ohio, Obama was up 50 percent to 42 percent, versus 49 percent to 42 percent prior to the debate. Remember, no Republican has won the White House without the state.

And finally in Pennsylvania, where Obama has struggled a bit, he widened his lead to 54 percent to 39 percent from before the debate when he was up 49 percent to 43 percent. 

A McCain spokeswoman, when asked about Obama’s jump in a handful of polls, stressed that the Arizona senator was an underdog in the race and that it was a difficult year for Republicans.

(additional reporting by Jeff Mason)

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credits: Reuters/Brian Snyder (McCain at the Harry S. Truman presidential library); Jason Reed (Obama at a rally in La Crosse, Wisc.)

CINCINNATI - The plate was heaped with a pile of spaghetti, covered with spicy chili, and layered over with a thick blanket of grated cheddar cheese, and it sat in front of Republican John McCain.

Refusing a bib to wear around his neck to catch the fallout, the presidential candidate dove into the plate of “three-way” chili, an early lunch at Skyline Chili, a Cincinnati institution.

He only made it about half-way through the ample serving, and then it was on to Xavier University for a town hall meeting.

After taking questions from the audience for an hour there, he retreated to a side room where he was interviewed by a couple of half-pints, a brother-and-sister team, Spencer and Piper Macke.

The favor was granted because Spencer, 6, had raised $4,000 for a military veterans fund. He and Piper, 5, were shy but got through five questions, including:

Have you ever driven a tank? McCain said he has sat in one, but could not be trusted to drive one.

Has he ever fired an M-16 rifle? No, but he carried a pistol as a Navy flyer.

Is the president like a king? “These days king have very little if any power.”

Was he served food as a prisoner of war in Vietnam?  Yes, often a soup with cabbage and “other things in it that I am happy to say I’ve never identified.”  

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Steve Marcus