2004 United States presidential election
55th quadrennial U.S. presidential election
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 Massachusetts junior senator John Kerry and North Carolina senior senator John Edwards.
Bush and Cheney were re-nominated 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 management 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 had voted to authorize the invasion, but criticized Bush's conduct of the Iraq War.
The public source identifies “2004 United States presidential election” as 55th quadrennial U.S. presidential election. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around United, States and presidential.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q464075. The Library of Congress control number is sh2008108985. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2004, 2001 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “2004 United States presidential election” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.