This page contains a timeline of the 2004 U.S. presidential election. For a more in-depth discussion of the candidates and issues at stake in that election and the campaign history leading up to election day, see U.S. presidential election, 2004. For information on other races conducted the same day, see U.S. Senate election, 2004 and U.S. House election, 2004. For an explanation of the U.S. presidential election process see U.S. Electoral College.

The U.S. presidential election occurred on November 2, 2004. However, as in the 2000 U.S. election, the election was too close for a winner to be declared that night. By the next morning, the Republican campaign was declaring a victory while the results in several states remained too close for the media to declare winners. Soon afterward the Kerry campaign decided that there were not enough uncounted votes in Ohio for them to win that state and Kerry telephoned Bush to concede. At 2 PM EST, Kerry held a news conference announcing the same. An hour later, Bush held his own to accept his victory.

In Ohio, the Libertarian and Green parties raised $113,600 necessary to fund a recount of the popular vote, which took place in early December and upheld the Bush victory in that state.

Events

Tuesday, November 2, 2004

• Citizens in two small New Hampshire towns were the first to have their ballots counted in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. In Dixville Notch, the more famous of the two due to its longstanding tradition of early voting, the incumbent lost ground compared to his showing in 2000, but got more total votes than the challenger: Bush — 19, Kerry — 7. Bush also won the vote in Hart's Location, which managed to report its results slightly earlier this year; Bush — 16, Kerry — 14, and Nader — 1. (09:00 UTC, November 2 2004, Associated Press (Associated Press) (Reuters) In both cases this represented a small swing compared with the 2000 results from the Republican candidate to the Democratic candidate.
• "U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens Tuesday allowed Republicans to challenge voter qualifications at the polls in Ohio, a key battleground state that could determine the presidential election. Stevens acted on an emergency request shortly before polls opened in Ohio and across the nation." He refused to set aside a U.S. appeals court order, issued Monday, which, reversing a lower court's ban, permitted political party members to challenge the credentials of potential voters at polling places across the state. -Reuters (Bloomberg)
• Some reports say Florida, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., (and possibly other states) have received record numbers of requests for absentee ballots for this election. Absentee ballots are counted differently based on the state [1], with most states counting them on election day, but with some exceptions, the last deadline being 10 days after the election (all Washington, D.C. absentee ballots, and oversea absentee ballots in Ohio and Florida). Washington State allows 15 days after the election for out of country absentee ballots to come in. It is possible that absentee ballots are being requested due to concerns about electronic voting, or simply due to an expected high overall voter turnout. [2] [3]
• Early exit polling shows strong Kerry battleground states edge [4]. Early exit polling has in the past tended to favor Republicans, though it favored Al Gore in several key states in the 2000 election.
• Leroy Chiao, currently stationed on the International Space Station, cast his vote by encrypted e-mail and became the first American to vote in a presidental election from space.
• Slate reports exit polls from ten states, with John Kerry winning in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and New Mexico. Bush projected to win in Nevada, North Carolina and Colorado. Together with the polls from MyDD there are results from 34 states. Kerry leads with 192 electoral votes, while Bush has 152. [5]
• Zogby [6] predicts a decisive 311 to 213 win for Kerry with 14 electoral votes too close to call.
• CNN projects Indiana, Kentucky, and Georgia for Bush. Vermont is projected for Kerry. CBS and FoxNews concur. Based on these projections, the electoral vote is 34 for Bush, 3 for Kerry.
• Yahoo! News is calling West Virginia for George W. Bush, making the projected electoral vote 39 for Bush, 3 for Kerry. CNN and NBC News both concur.
• CNN projects Alabama, Oklahoma, and Tennessee for President Bush; Connecticut, Delaware, Washington, DC, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine (except 2nd District), New Jersey, and Vermont for Senator Kerry: current electoral vote is 77-66, Kerry ahead.
• NBC calls North Carolina for Bush, 81-77 for Bush
• CNN (and ABC, and possibly others) projects South Carolina(8), Virginia(13), Kansas(6), Nebraska(4), North Dakota(3), South Dakota(3), Texas(34) and Wyoming(3) for president Bush, and New York(31) and Rhode Island(4) for senator Kerry. Projected count 155-112 for Bush. According to these numbers, both candidates have won the same states that their parties won in the 2000 election, but redistribution of districts means that the Democrats have lost 5 electoral votes and the Republicans have won 2 with respect to those elections.
• CNN and ABC project Louisiana(9) and Mississippi(6) for the president, leaving the count at 170-112 for the incumbent.
• FoxNewsChannel has Bush at 193-112 with Missouri(11), Arkansas(5) and Utah(5) now in the Bush column.
• ABC has Bush at 196-112, with Montana (3) for the president with Bush ahead in swing states Florida, Ohio and way behind in Pennsylvania.
• FoxNewsChannel says Bush has 75% chance of winning Florida
• CBS, CNN and FoxNewsChannel call Pennsylvania for Kerry, 196-133 for Bush. Florida would give Bush 223
• CNN projects California(55) for Kerry, Idaho(4) for Bush. 200-188 Bush in front (for ABC, as CNN has not called Montana).
• ABC calls Arizona(10) for Bush. 210-188.
• CNN won't call Florida but says Kerry camp is all but conceding there.
• ABC has Bush 237-Kerry 188
• ABC, BBC and CNN call Florida for Bush
• On CNN, Bush re-election committee chair Marc Racicot says we'll have a result tonight, seemed quietly confident of victory in Ohio and generally. Kerry camp still optimistic about Ohio.
• Kerry camp less optimistic now, according to FoxNews.
• ABC says Bush 237 Kerry 195; Fox says Bush 246 Kerry 206
• BBC, CNN, ABC and FoxNews call Colorado for Bush.
• Votes still being cast in Ohio. Peter Snow for the BBC estimates a Bush 279 Kerry 259 result if Bush takes Ohio; Kerry 'could get through the winning post otherwise'.
• Fox calls New Hampshire, plus 2nd Congressional District of Maine, for Kerry.
• Fox calls Ohio for Bush.
• BBC claims that the one Maine vote given to Bush has been given to Kerry, who now has all 4 Maine votes.
• BBC calls Washington for Kerry.
• Fox calls Alaska for Bush.
• NBC calls Ohio for Bush.
• BBC News reports that Bush Camp is timidly beginning to celebrate a victory while Kerry Camp remains silent
• CNN calls Ohio 'too close to call'.
• CBS calling Michigan for Kerry.
• CNN calls Minnesota for Kerry.
• CNN calls Hawaii for Kerry.
• CNN reports Democratic VP candidate John Edwards says: "We've waited four years for this victory. We can wait one more night" as results lag in Ohio and Iowa.
• Former Republican mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani says that Kerry should concede "for the good of the country".

Wednesday, November 3, 2004

• After 1 am, CNN changes exit polling results in Ohio from Kerry ahead to Bush ahead. [7]
• BBC, ABC, CBS, CNN call Nevada for Bush. FOX News and MSNBC, who both earlier called Ohio for Bush, do not call Nevada for Bush -- yet as of 4:07 AM EST. (Calling both for Bush would be equivalent to calling the presidency for Bush.)
• NBC calls Minnesota for Kerry.
• Tom Brokaw of NBC News refuses to call Nevada for Bush as long as outstanding absentee ballots (rumored to be as many as 60,000) have not been counted. Another reason for refusal is the contention by the Kerry camp that Ohio should not be called for Bush.
• BBC, CNN call Wisconsin for Kerry.
• On a special edition of Today, Tom Brokaw announces that NBC News will not call any more states for either candidate as long as the Kerry camp contests the Bush win in Ohio. This puts the NBC News electoral vote count at 269 for Bush and 238 for Kerry.
• White House Chief of Staff Andy Card claims victory for Bush before Kerry concedes or any of the networks call a winner.
• AP & CNN report Kerry has called Bush and conceded the election.
• Kerry conceded at 2 PM EST CNN, NPR; ABC finally calls Ohio for Bush
• Bush declared victory at 3 PM EST saying, "America has spoken, and I'm humbled by the trust and the confidence of my fellow citizens. With that trust comes a duty to serve all Americans. And I will do my best to fulfill that duty every day as your president." Networks have still not declared victors in several states.
• "Black Box Voting (.ORG) is conducting the largest Freedom of Information action in history. At 8:30 p.m. Election Night, Black Box Voting blanketed the U.S. with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships. Networks called the election before anyone bothered to perform even the most rudimentary audit." http://blackboxvoting.org/#foia
• Voting machines controversy in PA. Before polls even opened in Philadephia, 2,000 votes had already been cast on voting machines. Drudge Report. Philadelphia election officials and the district attorney quickly discounted this, apparently Republican operatives mistakingly believed the counter that records the total number of votes ever made on the voting machines was a count for a candidate. [8] [9]
• Voting machines controversy in Ohio. Walden O'Dell, the head of Diebold Incorporated, had said in 2003 that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." [10]
• In Iowa, a glitch with an optical vote counting machine caused Greene County to not report results for 6 of 15 precincts. A replacement machine was brought in and counting resumed at 9:45am, including recounting of the 9 precincts already counted. The count was finished in just over an hour and half. [11]

Friday, November 5, 2004

• "A computer error involving one voting-machine cartridge gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in a Gahanna precinct. Franklin County’s [Ohio] unofficial results gave Bush 4,258 votes to Democratic challenger John Kerry’s 260 votes in Precinct 1B, which votes at New Life Church on Stygler Road. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct." The machines in question are Danaher Controls Inc.'s ELECTronic 1242, an older-style touchscreen voting system, these machines are only used in Franklin County. [12] [13]
• Black Box Voting, an online blog generally considered too left-wing to be reliable takes the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. [14]
• Federal Court orders Florida officials to preserve absentee ballots received after election day. [15]

Sunday, November 7, 2004

• The Ralph Nader / Peter Camejo campaign filed a challenge to the voting results in New Hampshire after receiving numerous complaints from voting rights activists [1] [2]. This effort is widely encouraged by Democrats and Independents due to suspected flaws related to Diebold voting machines.

Tuesday, November 9, 2004

• Rocky Mountain News November 9, 2004 " A printing error that distorted bar codes on paper ballots is being blamed for delays that made this one of the last counties in the nation to report election results." [16]

Thursday, November 11, 2004

• "Green and Libertarian Presidential Candidates to Demand Ohio Recount." [17]
• "Nader calls for US election recounts" in Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, and North Carolina [18]

Saturday, November 13, 2004

Start of count of provisional ballots in Ohio. By Ohio law, provisional ballots are counted starting 10 days after the election.

Monday, December 13, 2004

• Electoral college delegates cast their votes.

• Legally binding recount begins in Ohio.

Thursday, January 6, 2005

• The electoral vote for the United States Presidency is officially certified as 286 for Republican President George W. Bush, 251 for Democratic Senator John Kerry, and 1 for Democratic Senator John Edwards, leading to Bush's reelection, despite a formal challenge to Ohio's electoral votes, the first challenge since 1877, resulting in a vote — 1-74 (Yea-Nay) in the Senate and 31-267 in the House.

Election incidents

For more information see 2004 U.S. election voting controversies (summary); 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities (detail).

As of November 10, there were 31,515 reported incidents of voting problems nationally, with approx. 350 new incidents being reported a day. One-third of the problems (12,074) involved voter registration, followed by "polling place inquiries" (7,073), absentee ballot-related problems (3,218) and machine problems (1,599). The latter included complaints that some machines registered votes for George W. Bush when the voter selected John Kerry. [19]

Some allege that voting locations that used electronic voting machines that did not issue a paper receipt or offer auditability correlate geographically with areas that had unilateral discrepancies between exit poll numbers and actual results. Exit polling data in these areas show significantly higher support for Kerry than actual results (outside the margin of error). Some are concerned that, from a statistical perspective, this may be indicative of vote rigging, because the likelihood of this happening by chance is less than 1 in 50,000. [20] Others point out this could be explained by poor exit polling techniques or all discrepancies may be within the margin of error. [21] [22] [23] [24] [25]

The first map shows the counties that voted democratic in the 2004 election. The dark blue counties are the most densely populated counties in Florida. The second map shows the Florida counties where absentee voting problems were reported. Orange counties had between 10 and 100 reported problems. The third map shows the Florida counties that use touch-screen electronic voting machines in red. The fourth map shows the Florida counties in which machine problems were reported. Incidents reports for Palm Beach, Broward County, Miami-Dade, and others are available at [26].

The above map shows all reported election incidents. The dark red states have over 1,000 reported incidents, red states have >100, orange have >10, yellow have >1. An interactive map is available at voteprotect.org.

Results

These are links to maps: Timeline of Poll Closings and Network Calls map, BBC News map, CBC News map, CBS News map, CNN.com map, Fox News map, NPR News map, The New York Times map

Map Legend: Unless otherwise noted on results maps the color red represents the Republican Party, and the color blue represents the Democratic Party.

Certificates of Ascertainment

Each state submitted their official election results to the president the President of the Senate and the National Archivist. The following results are from these Certificates of Ascertainment.

Footnotes

Third party candidates

Colorado constitutional amendment