Nine days on, six states still wait for a winner

The Other Counts

Florida is not the only state where the count has not yet been finalised. The absentee vote has still to be counted in most states. The election-day count is still under way inOregon; New Mexico is still too close to call; and the provisional results in Iowa and Wisconsin are so close that either side could demand a recount.

Florida is not the only state where the count has not yet been finalised. The absentee vote has still to be counted in most states. The election-day count is still under way inOregon; New Mexico is still too close to call; and the provisional results in Iowa and Wisconsin are so close that either side could demand a recount.

The most recent figures give Oregon to Al Gore with a majority of about 5,500. But Oregon votes by post, and the count is not expected to be finished until the end of the week.

In New Mexico, the lead has switched several times. On election night Mr Gore emerged the winner by some 4,000 votes; two days ago, George W Bush had a lead that varied from 4 to 17 votes. Now, Mr Gore is back in the lead, after it was found that the figure "six" in one tally had been misread as "one", depriving Mr Gore of 500 votes.

County-level checks on the vote count in Iowa, where Mr Gore was given victory on election night by fewer than 5,000 votes, have reduced the Vice-President's lead to about 1,500. Both there and in Wisconsin, where the margin of Mr Gore's victory was similarly slim, the Bush campaign could still request a recount. But time is of the essence in Iowa, with the deadline for asking for a recount due to pass at midnight tonight.

The other closely fought state, New Hampshire, is now out of the equation. Mr Bush won by 7,211 votes out of more than 600,000 cast, and no recount had been requested by the time the deadline passed on Monday night.