Updated at 5:15 a.m. CST

WASHINGTON — President Bush crept close to re-election early Wednesday, leading challenger John Kerry in a campaign cliffhanger framed by war in Iraq and joblessness at home. Ohio held the key, stirring echoes of Florida in 2000, but this time Bush’s advantage was substantial.

With a majority of the popular vote in hand, the Republican president planned to declare victory early Wednesday. “We are convinced that President Bush has won re-election,” White House chief of staff Andrew Card said shortly before dawn in the East.

Ceding nothing, Kerry went to bed without conceding. “We will fight for every vote,” his running mate, Sen. John Edwards, told supporters in Boston, where he and the four-term Massachusetts senator waited out the late, long count.

Card said Bush not only won a second term but Republicans added “to our majority in the House and … to our majority in the Senate.”

As Bush made plans to declare victory, his high command dispatched a 10-person political and legal team to Ohio in the event Kerry triggered a Florida-like fight. Card said Bush delayed his own public statement to “give Senator Kerry the respect of more time to reflect on the results of this election.”

That was a veiled request for Kerry to bow out gracefully, and avoid the rancor that accompanied a 36-day recount in Florida four years ago.

That margin was small, but Bush’s lead in Ohio is substantial — Card called it “statistically insurmountable, even after provisional ballots are considered.”

With Bush leading by 145,000 votes and roughly 190,000 yet to be counted, one top Kerry adviser said the Democrat’s chances of winning Ohio, and with it the White House, were difficult at best.

The race was remarkably similar to the 2000 campaign, Bush winning all but one of the states he carried four years ago, while Kerry picked up where Democrat Al Gore left off. For Bush, that meant sweeping the South and several western and Midwestern state. For Kerry that meant capturing California, Pennsylvania, New York and Illinois, a handful of West Coast and Midwest states.

Three states hung in the balance — New Mexico, Iowa and Ohio, but only the Buckeye State had enough electoral votes to make a difference.

After winning Nevada in the wee hours Wednesday, Bush stood only 16 electoral votes shy of the 270 required for a second term. Kerry stalled at 252. Bush made plans — later revisited — to declare victory.

Ceding nothing, Kerry dispatched Edwards to tell supporters: “We’ve waited four years for this victory. We can wait one more night.”

The night proved grim for Democrats. Republicans expanded their majority in the Senate, knocking off Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, and the GOP extended its decade-long hold on the House for another two years.

Florida fell into Bush’s lap with relative ease. Kerry took New Hampshire from Bush — the first and perhaps only state to switch parties — but it has just four electoral votes. That left Ohio as Kerry’s only hope.

The holdup was over provisional ballots — those cast by people whose qualifications to vote were challenged. At 3 a.m. EST, Bush had a lead of 125,000 votes; there were more provisional ballots outstanding.

“There’s no mathematical path to victory for Kerry in Ohio,” said Nicolle Devenish, spokeswoman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, arguing that Bush would get his share of the provisional ballots. The White House had contacted Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, urging the Republican to clarify the number of provisional ballots.

Nationwide, with 97 percent of the nation’s precincts reporting, some 112 million people had voted — up from 105 million in 2000.

Bush was winning the popular vote by around 3.6 million, or 51 percent to Kerry’s 48 percent.

Early in the voting, Kerry allowed himself to muse about the problems he might face in the White House, including a soaring deficit and a war that has claimed more than 1,100 lives.

“I’m not pretending to anybody that it’s a bed of roses,” said the 60-year-old Massachusetts senator.

The Electoral College count was excruciating: With 270 votes needed, Bush won 28 states for 254 votes. Kerry won 19 states plus the District of Columbia for 252 votes.

With three states out, Kerry was still on the hunt for electoral votes that the GOP won four years ago. The states’ won by Gore in 2000 are worth just 260 votes this year due to redistricting — 10 short of the coveted number.

Kerry could pick that up plus some in Ohio with 20 electoral votes.

A 269-269 tie would throw the presidential race to the House.

Alongside the White House and congressional races, a full roster of propositions and local offices kept voters busy. But all eyes were focused on Kerry’s bid to make Bush the first president voted out of office in the midst of a war.

“I’ve given it my all,” Bush said after voting in a firehouse at Crawford, Texas, hoping to avoid being the first wartime president bounced from office.

Save Ohio, the race was a carbon copy of 2000, a narrowly fought battle waged by lawyers and politicians alike. In 2000, Bush lost the popular vote to Gore but won the Electoral College count and the presidency after a ruling by the Supreme Court gave him Florida.

The incumbent sought to avoid the fate of his father — former President George H.W. Bush, who was ousted by voters in 1992 after waging war against Iraq and overseeing an ailing economy.

Legions of lawyers and election-rights activists watched for signs of voter fraud or disenfranchisement. New lawsuits sought clearer standards to evaluate provisional ballots in Ohio and a longer deadline to count absentee ballots in Florida.

While complaints were widespread, they weren’t significant. “So far, it’s no big, but lots of littles,” said elections expert Doug Chapin.

Voters were torn over the presidential race, in ways all too familiar.

Exit polls suggested that slightly more voters trusted Bush to handle terrorism than Kerry. A majority said the country was safer from terrorism than four years ago, and they overwhelmingly backed Bush.

However, among those who said they were very worried about a terrorist strike, Kerry held a slight lead. A majority of voters said things were going poorly in Iraq, and they heavily favored Kerry.

With nearly 1 million jobs lost in Bush’s term, Kerry was favored by eight of 10 voters who listed the economy as a top issue.

The nation’s mood? There was division on that, too. Half said the country was headed in the right direction, a good sign for the incumbent.

Voters welcomed an end to the longest, most expensive presidential election on record. “It’s the only way to make the ads stop,” Amanda Karel, 25, said as she waited to vote at a banquet hall in Columbus, Ohio.

Both sides spent a combined $600 million on TV and radio ads, more than twice the total from 2000.

Bush won among white men, voters with family incomes above $100,000 and weekly churchgoers. Three-fourths of white voters who described themselves as born-again Christians or evangelicals supported Bush.

The president had hoped to increase his support among the religious right since 2000, but exit polls suggest there was little change.

Kerry retained Gore’s margins among blacks and union households, key parts of the Democratic base. His voters named the economy and Iraq as top issues.

One in 10 voters were casting ballots for the first time and fewer than 10 percent were young voters, hardly the groundswell that experts had predicted. Kerry was favored by both groups, according to the surveys conducted for The Associated Press by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International.

Bush won Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Kerry won California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and statewide in Maine.

Eleven gubernatorial contests were being decided Tuesday, along with 5,800 legislative seats in 44 states. Former Bush administration budget director Mitch Daniels won the governorship in Indiana, taking the seat from the Democrats.

Among the notable ballot measures, voters in 11 states approved propositions that would ban gay marriage. In California, voters approved spending $3 billion on stem-cell research.