The 2004 United States presidential election in Texas took place on November 2, 2004, and was part of the 2004 United States presidential election. State voters chose 34 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
Texas was won by incumbent Republican President George W. Bush by a margin of 22.87%. Prior to the election, all 12 major U.S. news organizations expected Texas to vote for Bush, considering it to be a safe red state.
Texas has not voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since 1976, and has been a Republican stronghold since the 1980s. A former governor of the state, Bush’s performance stands as a high water mark for Republican presidential candidates in Texas, and remains the last time that a Republican has won more than 60% of the state’s vote, or that a Democrat has won less than 40%. Bush is the last Republican to win any of the following counties in a presidential election: Bexar, Cameron, Culberson, Dallas, and Harris. The 1,067,968 ballots cast in Harris County also marked the first time that any Texas county would cast more than one million votes. However, this is also the last election where Harris County would vote to the left of any of the top 5 most populous counties in the state, with the exception of Tarrant County. Harris County in this election voted to the left of Bexar by approximately only 0.2% of the votes. This is also the last election where the Republican candidate would win Tarrant County with at least 60% of the vote. Starting from 2008, Republicans would win Tarrant county with less than 60% of the vote, and in 2020 Joe Biden would eventually win Tarrant County.
Bush, who made historic gains with Latino voters in 2004, drew even with Kerry among Texas Latinos, winning 49% to Kerry's 50%. As of 2020, this election is the closest a Republican has come to carrying the Latino vote in Texas.
This is the last presidential election in which a Republican candidate has gotten over 60% of the vote due to the increasing Democratic shift in many of the urban counties Bush carried in this election. All of these counties would swing hard towards Barack Obama in 2008.
Primaries
2004 Texas Democratic presidential primary
2004 Texas Republican presidential primary
Campaign
Predictions
There were 12 news organizations who made state-by-state predictions of the election. Here are their last predictions before election day.
Polling
Bush won every single pre-election poll, and won each with at least 55% of the vote and a double-digit margin of victory. The final three polls averaged Bush leading 59% to 37%.
Fundraising
Bush raised $23,776,943. Kerry raised $5,554,831.
Advertising and visits
Neither campaign advertised or visited this state during the fall election.
Analysis
Texas, located in the South, has become a consistently Republican state at all levels. Economically and racially diverse, Texas includes a huge swath of the Bible Belt where many voters, especially those in rural Texas, identify as born-again or evangelical Christians and therefore tend to vote Republican due to the party's opposition to abortion. Although once part of the Solid South, the last time Texas voted for a Democratic presidential nominee was Jimmy Carter in 1976. George Bush achieved his party's best result in Texas since Ronald Reagan's second landslide in 1984.
President Bush carried 236 of the state's 254 counties, improving on his performance from 2000. East Texas, historically the most Democratic region in the state, solidified its support for the Republican Party with only Jefferson County, home to Beaumont, voting for John Kerry. South Texas, while still voting heavily for Senator Kerry, swung towards Bush as well.
Despite Bush's increased margin in the state compared to 2000, Kerry made major inroads in the state's suburban areas, especially in Metro Houston, the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex, and the Austin area. Kerry narrowed Bush's 2000 margins in Collin, Dallas, Denton, Fort Bend, Harris, Hays, Travis, and Williamson Counties. Out of those, however, only Travis County, home to Austin, flipped into the Democratic column, in part due to the city's strong liberal leanings and opposition to the Iraq War. Bush had won a plurality in the county in 2000 in part due to the Green Party's Ralph Nader winning 11% of the County's vote. Although Bush carried Dallas County by a narrow margin of 50% to Kerry's 49%, the city of Dallas proper voted heavily for Kerry, giving him 57% of the vote.