Back الانتخابات الرئاسية الأمريكية 2004 Arabic Президентски избори в САЩ (2004) Bulgarian Predsjednički izbori u Sjedinjenim Američkim Državama 2004. BS Eleccions presidencials dels Estats Units de 2004 Catalan 2004 nièng Mī-guók cūng-tūng sōng-gṳ̄ CDO ھەڵبژاردنی سەرۆکایەتیی ویلایەتە یەکگرتووەکانی ئەمریکا (٢٠٠٤) CKB Volby prezidenta USA 2004 Czech Præsidentvalget i USA 2004 Danish Präsidentschaftswahl in den Vereinigten Staaten 2004 German Προεδρική εκλογή των Ηνωμένων Πολιτειών 2004 Greek
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
538 members of the Electoral College 270 electoral votes needed to win | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opinion polls | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Turnout | 60.1%[1]  5.9 pp | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Bush/Cheney and blue denotes those won by Kerry/Edwards. Light blue is the electoral vote for John Edwards (written as "John Ewards") by a Minnesota faithless elector. Numbers indicate electoral votes cast by each state and the District of Columbia. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
.jpg)
.jpg)
 2004 U.S. presidential election | |
|---|---|
| Democratic Party | |
| Republican Party | |
| Minor parties | |
| Related races | |
| |
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 2004. Incumbent Republican President George W. Bush and his running mate, incumbent Vice President Dick Cheney, were re-elected to a second term. They narrowly defeated the Democratic ticket of John Kerry, a senator from Massachusetts, and his running mate John Edwards, a senator from North Carolina.
Bush and Cheney were renominated by their party with no difficulty. Meanwhile, the Democrats engaged in a competitive primary. Kerry emerged as the early front-runner but was faced with serious opposition by former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who briefly surged ahead of Kerry in the polls. Kerry won the first set of primaries in January and re-emerged as the front-runner, and Dean dropped out in February. Kerry clinched his party's nomination in March after a series of primary victories over runner-up Edwards, whom he ultimately selected to be his running mate.
The September 11 attacks in 2001 decisively reshaped Bush's foreign policy goals and garnered him near-universal support early in his term. However, by 2004 his handling of the war on terror attracted serious debate, particularly over his handling of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Bush presented himself as a decisive leader and attacked Kerry as a "flip-flopper". Kerry criticized Bush's conduct of the Iraq War but he had also voted for it. Domestic issues were debated as well, including the economy and jobs, health care, abortion, same-sex marriage, and embryonic stem cell research.
Bush won by a narrow margin of 35 electoral votes and took 50.7% of the popular vote. Bush swept the South and the Mountain states and took the crucial swing states of Ohio, Iowa, and New Mexico, the last two flipping Republican. Although Kerry flipped New Hampshire, Bush won both more electoral votes and states than in 2000. Ohio was the tipping-point state, and was considered to be the state that allowed Bush to win reelection. Some aspects of the election process were subject to controversy, although not to the degree seen in the 2000 presidential election. Bush won Florida by a 5% margin, a significant improvement over his razor-thin victory margin in the state four years earlier that had led to a legal challenge in Bush v. Gore. This remains the most recent presidential election in which the Republican candidate won Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia.
At the time, Bush received the most popular votes in history; this record went on to be broken in 2008. Bush's win was the only Republican popular vote victory during the eight elections from 1992 to 2020. As of 2025, Bush is the only Republican president since 1984 to have won re-election to a consecutive second term and since 1988 the only Republican presidential candidate to have won a majority of the popular vote.[b]
- ^ "National General Election VEP Turnout Rates, 1789-Present". United States Election Project. CQ Press. Archived from the original on July 25, 2014. Retrieved February 21, 2023.
- ^ a b "2004 ELECTION RESULTS" (PDF). www.fec.gov.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).