The best minds in the business were flummoxed in the early hours this morning, as hour by hour the close of polls across the US tantalisingly revealed America's new landscape, a political striptease not unlike Ireland's endless count process.
Democrats were saying they were very happy about the high turnout but unable to make any predictions and were celebrating wins in key swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida.
Republicans were warning not to forget that absentee votes which have yet to be counted may well add 1 to 2 per cent to the tallies and they expect them to favour Mr Bush.
The first two states in which polls closed, Indiana and Kentucky, both reflected a Bush advantage, 53-46 and 55-46 respectively. Indiana also saw the early re-election with some ease of the former presidential contender, Republican Senator Richard Lugar.
Mr Bush then also took South Carolina and Virginia, and Mr Gore picked up his first state, Vermont.
South Carolina has voted Republican reliably since 1976 and the Virginia vote is not surprising although its closeness is. Mr Gore had apparently made up considerable ground.
But shortly after polls closed in Florida and New Hampshire TV stations refused to call results on the basis of their exit polls saying they were too close.
Later, US television networks gave the key state of Florida to Mr Gore.
Kentucky was being seen as being particularly significant as President Clinton squeezed out a 2,000-vote victory here in 1996 after losing the state in 1992, but polls last week gave Mr Bush a 15-point lead. Mr Gore's reputation among coal and tobacco people probably ensured he would never win the state, a reality reflected in the fact that he only visited it twice during the campaign.
In a race where the campaigns may need every last electoral vote, tiny New Hampshire, with just four, is also a battleground. The New Hampshire primary launched the presidential campaign season in February. Voters in Dixville Notch started the nation's voting shortly after midnight.
Its voters gave Mr Bush 38 votes, Mr Gore 18, and Mr Ralph Nader one.
The exit polls were suggesting a far closer result in New England, the home of the popular former contender for the Republican nomination, Mr John McCain, a state that had been expected to go to Mr Bush.
There had been hints out of Florida that Mr Bush might have done better there. Local Democratic Senator Bob Gram told a radio programme he had received exit polls from the Gore campaign office which predicted a 50-47 win for the vice-President in a 25-electoral college vote state.
Democratic sources were claiming record turnouts in parts of the south of the state and in the first of the Senate seats to be won the Democrat Jim Nelson took the seat off the Republicans.
Mr Gore finished his campaign there with an early morning fireworks display on Miami beach after a 30-hour sweep through four states. Then back to Tennessee to vote with his wife, Tipper, in Forks River Elementary School in Elmwood near his home of Carthage.
Last night he was ensconced in a hotel in Nashville awaiting the final results before attending a rally scheduled for the city's War Memorial park. Some 1,400 journalists have descended on the park for the occasion.
Mr Bush and his wife Laura voted in Austin, Texas, where they too were preparing lavish celebrations for an expected victory. He is understood to have risen early after five hours sleep to make his wife a cup of coffee and ring his parents "to assure them I feel pretty good".