2004 Republican Party presidential primaries

Primary race overview[edit]

Incumbent President George W. Bush announced in mid-2003 that he would campaign for re-election; he faced no major challengers. He then went on, throughout early 2004, to win every nomination contest, including a sweep of Super Tuesday, beating back the vacuum of challengers and maintaining the recent tradition of an easy primary for incumbent Presidents (the last time an incumbent was seriously challenged in a presidential primary contest was when Senator Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980). Bush managed to raise US$130 million in 2003 alone, and expected to set a national primary fund-raising record of $200 million by the time of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City.


Several states and territories canceled their respective Republican primaries altogether, citing Bush being the only candidate to qualify on their respective ballot, including Connecticut,^[5] Florida,^[6] Mississippi,^[7] New York,^[8] Puerto Rico,^[9] and South Dakota.^[10]


Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, an opponent of the war in Iraq, Bush's tax cuts, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and much of Bush's social agenda, considered challenging Bush in the New Hampshire primary in the fall of 2003. He decided not to run, after the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003.^[11] He would later change his party affiliation to Democratic and run in that party's 2016 presidential primaries.^[12][13]


As of the 2024 presidential election, Bush is the last incumbent president, Democrat or Republican, to win all the delegates going into the national convention.