The 2004 United States presidential election in California took place on November 2, 2004, and was part of the 2004 United States presidential election. Voters chose 55 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

Quick Facts Turnout, Nominee ...

2004 United States presidential election in California

← 2000 November 2, 2004 2008 →
Turnout	76.04% (of registered voters) 5.10 pp 57.03% (of eligible voters) 5.11 pp[1]
Nominee John Kerry George W. Bush Party Democratic Republican Home state Massachusetts Texas Running mate John Edwards Dick Cheney Electoral vote 55 0 Popular vote 6,745,485 5,509,826 Percentage 54.31% 44.36%
County Results Kerry   40-50%   50-60%   60-70%   70-80%   80-90% Bush   50-60%   60-70%   70-80%
President before election George W. Bush Republican Elected President George W. Bush Republican

Close

California was won by Democratic nominee John Kerry by a 9.95% margin of victory. Prior to the election, all 12 news organizations considered this a state Kerry would win, or otherwise considered as a safe blue state. Republican presidential candidates have not taken California's electoral votes since Bush's father George H. W. Bush in his victory over Michael Dukakis in 1988. Bush would become the first and only Republican to win two terms in the White House without winning California at least once. With its 55 electoral votes, California was John Kerry's biggest electoral prize in 2004.

This is the only election since 1880 in which the Republican nominee won the nationwide popular vote without California, the only time since 1976 that it voted for the popular vote loser, and the only time ever that a Republican president has won re-election without winning California. This is also the only time since its statehood that a presidential candidate was elected to two terms to the presidency without winning the state either time.

As of the 2020 presidential election, this is the last time a Republican presidential candidate received more than 40% of the vote in California, where the margin of victory was in single digits, and where the Democratic Party failed to obtain at least 60% of the vote. Bush remains the last Republican candidate to win the following counties in a presidential election: Fresno, Merced, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Stanislaus, and Ventura, and also the last candidate of any party to win Butte County by a majority. This was also the only time since 1960 that California voted for a different presidential candidate than nearby New Mexico. It also remains the last presidential election that a Republican won more than a third of the vote in Los Angeles County and also the last time that the gap between the Republican and Democratic candidates was less than two million votes.

• 2004 California Democratic presidential primary
• 2004 California Republican presidential primary

California was once a Republican leaning swing state, supporting Republican candidates in every election from 1952 through 1988, except in 1964. However, since the 1990s, California has become a reliably Democratic state with a highly diverse ethnic population (mostly Latino) and liberal bastions such as the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County. The last time the state was won by a Republican candidate was in 1988 by George H. W. Bush.

In 2004, the state did swing slightly Republican by a 1.9% margin from 2000 due to strong swings in heavily populated San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Kern, Fresno, Stanislaus, and San Joaquin counties, in all of which Bush increased his margin by substantially more than he did nationally, and all of which save San Diego, San Joaquin, and Ventura he won by double digits. Bush also won over a million votes in Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States; and he held Kerry to a 0.2% margin in Sacramento County (which Gore had won by 4.0%). Bush also benefited from strong support by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state's Republican governor.^[8] These factors likely contributed to California being closer than expected in 2004.

Nonetheless, this proved the first time the Democratic Party had won remote Alpine County since 1936 and only the third in that county's 140-year electoral history, and the first time the Democratic nominee carried neighboring Mono County since 1940, and only the seventh since that county was formed in 1861; Bush thus became the first ever Republican to win the White House without carrying the former county, and the first to do so without carrying the latter county since William McKinley in 1896. Kerry further countered Bush's improved performance in Southern California and the Central Valley with large swings towards the Democratic Party in Northern California and the Central Coast. He improved on Al Gore's vote share by over 5% in Alameda, Sonoma, Marin, Santa Barbara, and San Mateo Counties, and in the city of San Francisco; and by over 10% in Santa Cruz County; he also improved on Gore by nearly 5% in San Luis Obispo County, although he didn't succeed in flipping it. In San Francisco, he became the first presidential nominee of any party in at least over a century to crack 80%, as Bush's vote share dipped below not only what he had gotten in 2000, but below Dole's in 1996.

Technically the voters of California cast their ballots for electors: representatives to the Electoral College. California is allocated 55 electors because it has 53 congressional districts and 2 senators. All candidates who appear on the ballot or qualify to receive write-in votes must submit a list of 53 electors, who pledge to vote for their candidate and his or her running mate. Whoever wins the majority of votes in the state is awarded all 53 electoral votes. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. Although electors are pledged to their candidate and running mate, they are not obligated to vote for them. An elector who votes for someone other than his or her candidate is known as a faithless elector.

The electors of each state and the District of Columbia met on December 13, 2004, to cast their votes for president and vice president. The Electoral College itself never meets as one body. Instead the electors from each state and the District of Columbia met in their respective capitols.

The following were the members of the Electoral College from California. All were pledged to and voted for John Kerry and John Edwards.^[12]

1. Robert H. Manley
2. Barbara Schraeger
3. Paul Johnson
4. Gary Simmons
5. Paul Batterson
6. Diana Madoshi
7. Kyriakos Tsakopoulos
8. Donald Linker
9. Paula Sandusky
10. Adam Woo
11. Chloe Drew
12. Karl Sliferv
13. Gary Prost
14. Joseph Cotchett
15. John Smith
16. George Marcus
17. Mark Hsu
18. Adele Bihn
19. Darrell Darling
20. Amarjit Dhaliwal
21. Rocco Davis
22. Kenneth Costa
23. Barbara Pyle
24. David Johnson
25. Andrew M. Siegel
26. Michael Carpenter
27. Lynda Von Husen
28. Randy Monroe
29. Lane M. Sherman
30. Moreen Blum
31. Yolanda Dyer
32. Paul I. Goldenberg
33. Lenore Wax
34. Mitch O'Farrell
35. Franklin A. Acevedo
36. Gwen Moore
37. Pedro Carillo
38. Karen Walters
39. Ted Lieu
40. Valerie McDonald
41. Marvin
42. Douglas E. Hitchcock
43. Barbara Kerr
44. Salvador Sanchez
45. Joe Baca Jr.
46. Grant Gruber
47. James T. Ewing
48. Louise Giacoppe
49. James G. Bohm
50. Mark Lam
51. Chuck Lower
52. Susan Koehler
53. Mary Salas
54. Andrew Benjamin
55. Margaret Lawrence