the wee hours
先生が書かれているようにオバマ氏の勝利が確実になりました。勝利宣言&敗北宣言はまだでしょうか。
wee hoursは、ご存じのことと思いますが、Scottish Englishを由来として、 "very small "(LDOCE) を表します。the wee(small) hoursとなると"the early hours of the morning, just after 12 o'clock at night" (ibid)という意味になります。赤字の部分も、「真夜中過ぎまでもつれ込んだ」という意味になりますね。(Minnesota)
Obama wins four more years - but will results of popular vote hamper him?
President Obama won another four years in office today according to network projections, rising triumphant from a brutal campaign against his Republican foe, Mitt Romney, who in the end failed to harvest the votes he needed in enough of the handful of swing states that was always going to decide this election.
An election night that some had seen stretching into the wee hours was decided with reasonable speed even as the counting was still under say in Florida and Virginia, two among the squeaker battleground states. Still not clear, however, is whether Mr Obama can also prevail in the popular vote. A failure to do so would only be a subplot to his victory but an important one that would surely hamper his ability to govern in a second term.
