The Associated Press

Texas Gov. George W. Bush claimed cautious victory Wednesday in the unresolved presidential race. The outcome of his race with Democrat Al Gore hung on Florida and the uncertain fate of its 25 electoral votes.

”This morning brings news from Florida that the final vote count shows that Secretary Cheney and I have carried the state of Florida,” Bush told reporters in a midday appearance. ”If that result is confirmed in an automatic recount, as we expect it to be, then we have won the election.”

Gore, for his part, slept past noon and remained cloistered with advisers or relatives in Nashville. He planned to thank campaign workers later in the day and then escape for several days to Center Hill Lake in Smithville, Tenn., not far from the Gore family farms in Carthage.

Asked whether the Gore campaign would mount a court challenge if the Florida recount did not go Gore’s way, campaign chairman William Daley replied: ”I doubt it.”

Americans cast some 100 million votes Tuesday – 48,591,357 for Gore and 48,421,815 for Bush. That left the Bush-Cheney ticket and the Gore-Lieberman ticket tied at 48 percent.

Despite Bush’s assertion of a complete vote in Florida, a small number of absentee ballots remain uncounted. Fewer than 1,800 votes separated the two men at last count, with Bush having the edge.

Bush, with running mate Dick Cheney at his side, seemed matter-of-fact as he spoke with reporters outside the governor’s mansion on the morning after a nail-biter of a night. Earlier, during a lunchtime photo session inside the mansion, Bush was more animated, even venturing a few jokes.

Bush said he had dispatched former Secretary of State James A. Baker III to oversee the recount under way in Florida, with final results expected on Thursday. Daley said former Secretary of State Warren Christopher would oversee the recount for the Democrats.

Gore himself thought he had lost Tuesday night, when the broadcast networks projected Bush the winner in Florida – and thus the nation.

The vice president telephoned his congratulations to the Texas governor.

Then he called again and took his concession back.

In the wee hours, Daley finally appeared in Gore’s stead to tell a crowd of supporters: ”This race is simply too close to call.”

Standing in the rain, the Nashville crowd chanted, ”Recount!”

Bush’s hometown newspaper, the Austin American-Statesman, had to stop the presses after printing 59,000 copies with the front-page headline ”Bush!”

TV networks and many other newspapers also proclaimed Bush the winner. The Associated Press did not, citing the narrowing vote count. By dawn, it was clear the race was not over.

The AP tally showed Bush leading by 1,784 votes in Florida, and both the Bush and Gore campaigns were sending teams of lawyers to the state Wednesday to keep an eye on the recount.

The election stacked up as the closest race since John F. Kennedy defeated Richard M. Nixon in 1960 by 118,574 votes, a contest whose outcome was also uncertain until the day after the voting.

Bush and Gore were both in reach of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. As dawn broke in the East, Bush had won 29 states for 246 electoral votes. Gore had won 18 states plus the District of Columbia for 255.

The presidential races in New Mexico and Oregon, like Florida, were too close to call.

Green Party insurgent Ralph Nader failed to get enough votes to qualify for federal funding in 2004, but he took enough – presumably from Gore – to emerge as the potential spoiler to the vice president.

The congressional race was narrow as well. Before the election, Congress was Republican but closely divided and it emerged Republican and even more closely divided following Tuesday’s voting.

Republicans picked up six Democratic House seats in scattered states, enough to renew their hold for two more years. But their majority shrank when they gave back eight other seats elsewhere, including four in California.

”We figured it was going to be close,” said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. – and it was.

With winners declared in 33 of the 34 races at stake, Republicans have at least a 50-48 margin in the Senate. Too close to call was the race in Washington state, where former Rep. Maria Cantwell was challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Slade Gorton.

Voters ousted Sen. William V. Roth of Delaware, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and father of the tax-saving Roth IRA, as well as four other Republicans and Democrat Chuck Robb of Virginia

Missourians rejected Republican Sen. John Ashcroft, electing instead their dead governor, Mel Carnahan, killed three weeks ago in a plane crash. His successor has pledged to appoint widow Jean Carnahan, who told supporters, ”I pledge to you, rather, let’s pledge to each other, never let the fire go out.”

In New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the first president’s wife to win a Senate seat. When word of his wife’s victory came in, President Clinton was on the telephone in their hotel suite, talking to a personality named Billy T on Las Vegas radio station KCEP, trying to nudge Westerners to the polls.

Clinton told Billy T he was the first president in history to have a wife in the Senate ”and I like it.”

Regardless of the outcome of the presidential race, Joseph Lieberman is assured of a job. Lieberman was bidding to become the first Jewish vice president, but he also easily won re-election to the Senate from his home state of Connecticut. If the Democrats win the White House, he would be replaced by a Republican appointed by the state’s GOP governor.

Bush, whose father, President George H.W. Bush, was defeated by Clinton in 1992, had the satisfaction of carrying both Clinton’s and Gore’s home states of Arkansas and Tennessee.

Bush, in Austin, Texas, ate dinner and said he was worried more about what the suspense was doing to his parents than to himself. He did not address his supporters, who waited deep into the night in a cold rain.

And Gore, aides said, went to bed.

Voter turnout was higher than expected, a notch above 1996, when fewer than half of the adult population cast ballots. On Tuesday, between 52 percent and 53 percent voted, estimated one turnout expert, Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.

”It’s kind of neat to be that important,” said Barbara Garwood, 50, in Orlando, Fla., who voted for Bush. She made that comment at a time it appeared that Florida had delivered victory to Bush.

Some voters saw the election as a referendum on Clinton’s stewardship.

”I don’t want another eight years of the kind of administration we’ve had,” said David Fair, a Knoxville, Tenn., priest who voted for Bush. ”I feel our country has become less moral.”

But Gordy Janisse, 48, a custodian in St. Clair Shores, Mich., pointed to the economy to explain his vote for Gore. ”Why try to fix something that’s not broke?” he asked. ”It’s common sense.”

Exit polls showed that voters who cared most about taxes and world affairs supported Bush, while those most concerned about Medicare, prescription drugs, Social Security, the economy and education favored Gore.

Bush was the solid favorite among men and white voters and the wealthy, while Gore won among women, blacks, Hispanics and those earning below $30,000 a year, according to the exit interviews, which were conducted by Voter News Service, a consortium of The Associated Press and the television networks.

Nader won just 3 percent of the national vote, short of the 5 percent that would qualify his party for federal campaign funds in the 2004 elections but good enough to potentially tip several states to Bush – Florida among them.

Nader was unapologetic Wednesday, and predicted continued growth for the Greens. ”This is the beginning of the end for the two-party duopoly,” he said.

About half of Nader voters said in exit polls they would have voted for Gore in a two-way race; about 30 percent said they simply would not have voted without Nader in the race.

”I voted for Nader because I didn’t like any of the other candidates,” said Melissa Larson, 22, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. ”I’d rather have Gore (than Bush), but I couldn’t bring myself to vote for him.”

The Reform Party’s candidate, Pat Buchanan, barely registered.