A heated presidential election came to an end Wednesday with Democratic Sen. John Kerry conceding victory to Republican President George W. Bush.

Kerry addressed Americans at about 1 p.m. Wednesday to announce that he indeed was conceding to Bush.

In his speech, Kerry told supporters he would never stop fighting for them.

Bush appeared on television shortly after and thanked the American people for electing him to a second term.

Bush reached out to Kerry supporters in his speech and said he will do everything he can to earn their trust.

“To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support and I will work to earn it,” he said.

Bush stressed that a new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation.

NIU Political science professor James Schubert said the election would come down to which candidate won Ohio – and it did.

“My feeling Election Day was that I didn’t know what would happen,” he said. “I made a commitment to go to bed at midnight irregardless, and I did.”

Barbara Burrell, director of NIU’s public opinion laboratory, was surprised that the election wasn’t as close as originally estimated.

“It was probably not as close as I thought it would be,” Burrell said. “I think there was overemphasis of there being fraud and problems at the polls.”

Some students, like senior psychology major Jackie Schram, were somewhat apathetic about the election results.

Schram said she was divided on the two candidates and as a result was neither upset nor thrilled with the outcome of the election.

“I have heard arguments that Bush brought us into the war and he should be the one that brings us out because he knows more about the situation,” she said. “However, I don’t agree with some of his conservative stances on social issues.”

Starting today, the public opinion lab will be administering a state policy survey with 1,200 interviews planned throughout Illinois in which it will ask what the most important issues were for people when casting their votes.

Bush’s vote total for the 2004 election was the largest ever – the 51 percent of the popular vote he received made him the first president since his father in 1988 to receive more than 50 percent of the vote.

Republicans also extended their control in both the House and the Senate.

Associate communication professor Karen Whedbee expressed concerns with the outcome of the election, saying Bush will have control of Congress and the Supreme Court.

“The important principle of the Constitution is to achieve some sort of balance of power between the executive, judicial and legislative branches,” Whedbee said. “The balance is now skewed toward the president.”

Whedbee acknowledged that President Bush and the Republican Party achieved a major victory.

“At the same time, however, the party needs to recognize that they still have a deeply divided electorate with significant differences of opinion on major issues,” she said.