[84] The OSCE is not affiliated with the United Nations. Sharpton followed suit a couple weeks later.

Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean emerged as the early front-runner in the 2004 Democratic primaries, but Kerry won the first set of primaries in January 2004 and clinched his party's nomination in March after a series of primary victories.

In the general election, Bush won 286 of the 538 electoral votes and 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Not realizing that the law required the phrasing, some people viewing the ads reportedly questioned why Dean might say such a thing—such questions were easier to ask because of the maverick nature of Dean's campaign in general. In 2000 both Bush and Gore spent large amounts of time and resources in the state; in 2004 similar spending did not take place.

55th quadrennial U.S. presidential election, State-by-state forecasts of electoral vote outcome. [15] Kerry supporters cited the war in Iraq, the economy and jobs, and health care. [46] This was the first time in U.S. history that an elector had cast a vote for the same person to be both president and vice president. It is not even known whether the vote for Edwards was deliberate or unintentional; the Republican Secretary of State and several of the Democratic electors have expressed the opinion that this was an accident. Man held without bail in NY couple's deadly crash, Bill would posthumously grant freedom to NH slaves, Nepal's answer to deadlock: making chief judge PM.

The result of an electoral tie would cause the election to be decided in the House of Representatives with each state casting one vote, regardless of population. [11] However, those in the actual audience that day have insisted that they didn't know about the infamous "scream" until they returned to their hotel rooms and saw it on television.[12]. He swept the South and the Mountain States and took the crucial swing states of Ohio, Iowa, and New Mexico, the latter two being flipped Republican.

States where margin of victory was under 1% (22 electoral votes): States where margin of victory was more than 1% but less than 5% (93 electoral votes): States where margin of victory was more than 5% but less than 10% (149 electoral votes): Bush received 62,040,610 popular votes compared to Kerry's 59,028,444. In March's Super Tuesday, Kerry won decisive victories in the California, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island primaries as well as in the Minnesota caucuses. This law was not well known or widely publicized at the beginning of the Democratic primary season, which led to some early misperception of Howard Dean, who was the first candidate to buy television advertising in this election cycle. Because of the Act's restrictions on candidates' and parties' fundraising, a large number of so-called 527 groups emerged. The following is list of the states considered swing states in the 2004 election by most news organizations and which candidate they eventually went for. Days before Kerry announced Edwards as his running mate, Kerry gave a short list of three candidates: Sen. John Edwards, Rep. Dick Gephardt, and Gov. Bush had preliminary leads of less than 5% of the vote in only four states, but if Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico had all eventually gone to Kerry, a win for Bush in Ohio would have created a 269–269 tie in the Electoral College. The Democrats picked up the governorships in Montana and New Hampshire, but the Republicans picked up the ones in Indiana and Missouri. Change in vote margins at the county level from the 2000 election to the 2004 election. Eleven of the fifty United States governors were up for re-election, as were the governorships of two U.S. territories. [6] The United States invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, along with a "coalition of the willing" that consisted of additional troops from the United Kingdom, and to a lesser extent, from Australia and Poland. In September 2003, retired four-star general Wesley Clark announced his intention to run for the Democratic nomination.