Talk:2004 United States presidential election/Archive 6

Polls
Wasn't Kerry up 5% in the polls just before the election? I'd like to see a section on polls in this article.

65.101.231.48 (talk) 22:42, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Clark County
Is there any reason why there is no mention of the half baked idea of the UK Guardian newspaper to intervene in Clark County? See USA today article Resources here (Bush won Clark county BTW--Stroika (talk) 03:37, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Dubious
the reasoning in the section on votesplitting went: -- people were concerned about the effect of 3rd party candidates --> because of the electoral college one person's vote can effect the voting of an entire state's electoral college delegation's vote --> because the effect of votes for 3rd party candidates didn't swing the popular vote, the election, governed not by the popular vote, but by the easily swayed electoral college, vote splitting didn't effect the election...  which is problematic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.92.144.73 (talk) 09:08, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Close State vs. Battleground States
Shouldn't these two sections be merged, they are pretty much the same thing. Also shouldn't this be completely under "results" not a seperate section. --Levineps (talk) 20:33, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Debates
There's no mention of presidential primary debates in this entry.

Vandalism
The panel to the right of this article currently shows Kerry to have won the 2004 election. The body text of the article remains correct, as far as I can tell. An editor needs to flag this article as inaccurate until someone puts up the right information. 137.165.240.191 (talk) 20:35, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * it's been fixed, thanks.. -- Versa geek  20:42, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Kerry and Dean in the intro
I've restored the following sentence in the intro:
 * Both Kerry and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean have stated their opinion that voting in Ohio did not proceed fairly and that, had it done so, the Democratic ticket might have won that state and therefore the election.

In late January, User:Timmeh removed it, writing: "the source doesn't support the claim that Kerry admitted votes werent counted correctly." From the article:
 * Kerry conceded, however, that the widespread irregularities make it impossible to know for certain that the outcome reflected the will of the voters.

Kerry clearly opines here that "voting in Ohio did not proceed fairly and that, had it done so, the Democratic ticket might have won that state and therefore the election." Dean concurred, saying:
 * "I'm not confident that the election in Ohio was fairly decided."

Because both quotes are clearly reflected in the intro sentence, and because such claims are rare and notable in presidential elections, I'm putting the sentence back in. Best, Mdiamante (talk) 21:41, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


 * That's all fine, but the sentence doesn't belong in the lead part of the article. It should be in the election controversy section. I'd also be grateful if you could get sources for some of the other info in that section. Tim  meh  !  23:06, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, but it does belong. When was the last time that a presidential nominee and the chairman of his national committee directly called an election's result into question? I don't think Nixon or his RNC even did so in 1960. Nobody remotely as prominent has called into question Obama's win, but that page has an election controversies section also.
 * Kerry and Dean's statements are not normal; they are exceptional, and notable enough to be mentioned in the intro. That's why it's been there since September '07. Per your suggestion, however, I've added two quotes from the article in the main "Controversies" section. Anyone else have any thoughts on this debate? Best, Mdiamante (talk) 02:44, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Do we have any concrete evidence, showing had there been no irregularities, the Kerry-Edwards ticket would've won? Those are very highly political biased assumptions by Kerry & Dean. GoodDay (talk) 18:21, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Please note that neither Kerry nor Dean actually make the assumption, they only say that the matter is unknowable. But that's a moot point, as the intro never presented their suspicions as fact; it only noted that they'd expressed them, and that in itself is a very rare, and thus notable, occurrence in presidential politics. Best, Mdiamante (talk) 22:46, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The objective fact that's more notable than the Kerry/Dean statements is the Congressional challenge to Ohio's electoral votes. There was no such challenge perfected (i.e. supported by at least one Representative and at least one Senator) even after the scandalous 2000 election.  I don't know when the last time any such challenge occurred -- probably the nineteenth century.  Its rarity makes the controversy worth mentioning in the introductory section, and the Dean/Kerry opinions throw light on why the challenge was brought. JamesMLane t c 23:26, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Good point. I'll try to address that before long.Mdiamante (talk) 03:32, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Minnesoda
It's funny that Kerry was elected in Minnesota's congressional district in the electoral map of 2004 although Bush had been winning all of these states —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.53.150.214 (talk) 14:24, 11 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Could you clarify please? Tim  meh  !  14:49, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Undefined Acronym
The acronym "ES&S" is used without definition. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.221.22.238 (talk) 01:11, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Why John Kerry's photograph should be changed
I think that John Kerry's current picture in the 2004 election is not good enough. I think it should be changed to Kerry's congressional photo with columns in the background, because I think that photo looks more recent and it looks better. I will change it. Thank you for your understanding.

Darren Monaghan, 22 July, 2009, 21:24 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.16.113.24 (talk) 20:24, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Photo's in election articles should not necessarily be recent (reflecting current appearance) but rather should reflect the appearance of the candidate in the election year (in this case 2004). Highground79 (talk) 07:22, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Gramatical Touch-ups
I changed a few sentences in the opening paragraph because they were worded awkwardly. Is the information up there, like which states switched sides from democrat to republican and such, relevant though? M.jefferton (talk) 16:50, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Alaska counties/boroughs
This article currently says "Six states saw every county vote for one candidate: Bush won every county in Utah, Alaska, and Oklahoma while Kerry won every county in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Hawaii."

According to Wikipedia, "Alaska is not divided into counties, as most of the other U.S. states, but it is divided into boroughs. Many of the more densely populated parts of the state are part of Alaska's sixteen boroughs, which function somewhat similarly to counties in other states. However, unlike county-equivalents in the other 49 states, the boroughs do not cover the entire land area of the state. The area not part of any borough is referred to as the Unorganized Borough."

Further, the Alaska Secretary of State's office does not give election results by borough, but instead presents it broken down into 40 House Districts. Bush did not win all 40 House Districts. See http://www.elections.alaska.gov/ei_return_2004_GENR.php

Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections presents the election results by 4 Regions with Bush winning all 4 regions, but it is not clear to me how the regions are defined. http://www.uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/datagraph.php?year=2004&fips=2&f=0&off=0&elect=0.

I don't see how anyone can say George Bush won every county in Alaska, when Alaska does not have counties; Official Alaska election results are not provided by borough; Bush did not carry every house district; A private map shows him winning 4 regions without explaining what how the regions are defined.

Nightkey (talk) 12:33, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Dick Gephardt
I changed the description of Dick Gephardt in the caption under his picture from former minority leader to former majority leader because even though he was more recently a minority leader, majority leader is a higher position. Soxrock24 (talk) 04:41, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Ohio court disclosures
Is this a credible source? If so, it seems the article needs to be updated to cite this source: New Court Filing Reveals How the 2004 Ohio Presidential Election Was Hacked. WilliamKF (talk) 16:06, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Bad data in table of popular vote counts by state
It seems that the data in the by-state tally is incorrect.

The button for the link: http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2004/federalelections2004.pdf states: "Note also: Official Federal Election Commission Report, with the latest, most final, and complete vote totals available."

For Arkansas, the table lists 573,182 votes for Bush, but the FEC report (p.27) at the link I mention lists 572,898 votes for Bush. There are discrepancies for Illinois also.

Is there an explanation for these apparent errors?

Thanks.CountMacula (talk) 02:54, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Issue of Kerry's decision to dispute the win being in the lead
Should this text be in the second paragraph: "The winner was not determined until the following day, when Kerry decided not to dispute Bush's win in the state of Ohio. The state held enough electoral votes to determine the winner of the presidency. Both Kerry and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean have stated their opinion that voting in Ohio did not proceed fairly and that, had it done so, the Democratic ticket might have won that state and therefore the election."

It would seem to be rather notable as it may have determined the outcome of the election. Jim1138 (talk) 08:30, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Anyone else that should be included in the discussion? Jim1138 (talk) 08:35, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Seems reasonable to me. Jonathanfu (talk) 08:39, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
 * The source is an opinion piece, written by a partisan author, housed on the website of a partisan organization, and originally published in a magazine whose specialty is music and pop culture, not political news or NPOV analysis. I have a lot of trouble considering this a reliable source, especially for assertions with probable BLP implications. Actual news reports of statements by Dean or Kerry, on the other hand, are probably appropriate in the main text of the article (I haven't checked recently, but I believe similar comments about Nixon not disputing his loss based on alleged improprieties in Illinois were either in his article or the 1960 election article at one point). Fat&#38;Happy (talk) 20:22, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
 * You are making the uncertainty over the election's outcome a lot more significant and widely discussed than it actually is by giving it its own paragraph in the lead. I cannot find any mainstream news source disputing the outcome of the election, or assigning a different outcome a high probability. If you have one, show it. And there are many, many factors that affected the election's outcome, such as the Swift Boat attacks or allegations of Kerry's flip-flopping, that are not in the lead.
 * My proposed change would be: "As in the 2000 presidential election, voting controversies and concerns of irregularities emerged during and after the vote, particularly in the state of Ohio. However, there was far less controversy about this election than in 2000." That seems entirely fair, considering that dispute over this election is mostly expressed in far-flung conspiracies, and that Kerry himself declined to seek a recount and has barely talked about the election ever since. --24.13.213.40 (talk) 22:07, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Article from a source politically similar to Rolling Stone completely debunking the cited article in the lead: http://www.salon.com/2006/06/03/kennedy_39/. I don't think conspiratorial, distorted views and isolated statements made by the election's losers deserve a place in the lead. --24.13.213.40 (talk) 00:00, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Presidential elections in 2004
2004 Presidential Election presently redirects here, but 2004 Presidential election redirects to a dab page at 2004 presidential election. I think that all three capitalization should lead to the same place, so I have nominated both redirects at Redirects for discussion/Log/2012 November 19. Your comments in that discussion would be welcome. Thryduulf (talk) 12:41, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Somewhat related, a page that links here uses the term, "presidential election 2004", and a candidate from that election's page John Kerry uses the term, "presidential"-(w/o capitalizing the "P" which in the Wikipedia MOS appears to recommend using "P" in these cases)[]. Due to this problem I am hesitating on changing anything there24.0.133.234 (talk) 23:03, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

bin Laden tapes' effect on polling mis-represented
Having taken a new interest in the subject, I reviewed Real Clear Politic's aggregation of 2004 US Presidential Election polling, specifically the dates 10/28 - 11/2. In the current Wiki page, it says Bush opened up a larger lead on Kerry following the bin Laden tape release on 10/29, when in fact the opposite is true. According to RCP's aggregate, the margin closed slightly. There is a similar mention of this on the bin Laden tape's page. It specifically mentions a 6 point lead, but doesn't address what poll they are referencing, nor does it address the (more accurate) aggregation of polls showing no significant influence of the tapes. Should this be edited? Laboxter (talk) 00:40, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Over use of color
unfortunately, a significant portion of the information is conveyed exclusively using color, which is inaccessible to the blind and color blind. In particular, using red/blue to indicate states won by republicans and democrats. any ideas of how to fix this problem? Frietjes (talk) 14:25, 10 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid there's really no easy solution for that without making the whole article very messy and cumbersome. It's just such a universal standard to use red for Republicans and blue for Democrats, the colors are used on the main electoral college map, on the congressional district maps, on the county-level maps, the shading of the states by party on the state-by-state result table, and in indicating the state victory margins in the Close States section...and this color-based format is used in every single article in any way related to an American election. It's pretty much impossible to replicate all the data communicated by that color without really making a mess of the article, having to write out "Democratic" and "Republican" in every spot where blue or red is used. In some cases it would be pretty much impossible, because going through say a county map and putting a D or an R in each of 3000+ counties would be very tedious to make and not very useful since you'd have to zoom in very close to actually see the result.
 * I agree it's very unfortunate for colorblind users, I wonder if Wikipedia would consider possibly adding a Colorblind version of Wikipedia where all that information could be conveyed using exclusively non-color based methods, because it would be too messy and very difficult (in some cases impossible) to try to provide a colorblind solution on top of the color scheme system used in the main articles. If we can get a Colorblind version of Wiki, I would be happy to help contribute in making at least state-level maps and tables and communicate party data without relying on color. Inqvisitor (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 21:55, 10 February 2014 (UTC)


 * it's really not that hard to fix. so long as the information is not conveyed exclusively using color (see WP:Color) there is no problem. for example, the Close states section would just need some additional text. Frietjes (talk) 00:25, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
 * But Close States is just one minor section. Color is used all over every single election page in so many different sections. It would look kinda silly and pointless to edit just one small section to be colorblind accessible when the rest of the page is all so clearly not colorblind accessible, plus again it would look cumbersome to add "Democratic" and "Republican" next to each state, while right now the Close State section looks neat and orderly. Plus the winner color is not the important information being conveyed by the Close States section, the important information from the section is simply to inform the readers which states were closest in margin. But what about all the maps and tables which all depend on color? It would be extremely difficult to make them colorblind accessible. Wiki's color guidelines regarding colorblindness simply require that colors used be of sufficient contrast, the colors used in the Close States section both pass the Color Contrast Analyser found at WP:Color. Inqvisitor (talk) 02:02, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Reading over my post I want to apologize if I appear to be coming across as insensitive to those who are colorblind. But I genuinely don't think there is an easy solution to making election articles accessible to colorblind users. The red-blue color scheme is thoroughly ingrained in how we process election data. It would make the article very messy and cumbersome to write out "Democratic" and "Republican" every time blue or red is used, and again, there is nothing that can be done about the many maps and tables. Again I would strongly recommend the idea of trying to get Wikipedia to create a Colorblind version of Wikipedia, there is already precedent for same-language Wikis like the Simple English version. And I'd be happy to contribute the best I could to election articles (my personal project for the moment) for a colorblind version, complete with maps using Rs and Ds instead of red and blue if that would work for such a purpose. Inqvisitor (talk) 04:25, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
 * per WP:Color "Ensure that color is not the only method used to convey important information". if the information is not important, than there is no problem.  the parts of the article that fall under WP:NOT are probably not important. Frietjes (talk) 15:28, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Well I think the articles do accomplish that to the best possible extent that they could. In the Close States section, the winner is not the important information, it's simply included for reference, the important information is simply the margin that made the states close. One can easily check the full state-by-state results table for the margin along with the full state result (I personally took the time to create numerically detailed state-by-state result tables for every election from 2000 going back so far to 1872, and I eventually hope to create them for all elections); while a colorblind user might not be able to tell who won a state by the party shading the information is also clearly conveyed by simply checking the numbers for the state. Similarly, I think the tables allow a colorblind user to find out, in numerical format, who won which state and by what margin, even if they can't tell by looking at the main electoral college map or the party shading on the table. So personally I think the most important and most detailed information about the election results are actually provided in a non-color-based format, the numbers on the state-by-state election results table. Inqvisitor (talk) 02:24, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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Results section
We shouldn't have Edwards 5 popular votes listed, as they didn't get him his 1 electoral vote. GoodDay (talk) 01:21, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 1 December 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved. The RM wasn't necessary as a bot is going to move all the articles in the next few days. However, as this was requested ahead of time, I've just moved it manually. Number  5  7  12:03, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

United States presidential election, 2004 → 2004 United States presidential election – RfC passed, plase see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (government and legislation). B dash (talk) 09:45, 1 December 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Image sizes
The images in the infobox are sized differently (at least on mobile). Can this be fixed?  Nixinova  T  <b style=color:white>C</b> </b> 04:46, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

"Re-election of George Bush" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Re-election of George Bush. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 May 13 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Paper Luigi T • C 16:05, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Background to the election
Hi there,

In the Background section, the second sentence of the third paragraph reads: 'The Iraq issue gave Bush an antagonist to present to the people, (similar but different than that of 2001) rallying support against a common enemy rather than gaining voters through ideas or policy.[3]'

This seems like nothing more than an opinion with no balance to it and is referenced by a book written nine years before the election takes place. I'd suggest this takes more away from the article than it adds to it. Should this be removed or changed? It could be said that the last part of the sentence ('...rather than gaining voters through ideas and policy.') is simply inaccurate and misleading. The removal of Saddam was both an idea and a policy, with voters being gained and lost through its pursuit.

I've never really submitted anything like this before but this stands out like a sore thumb.

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7F:DC8B:1200:DC9C:CF46:76ED:93CB (talk) 14:03, 22 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I totally agree with you. Using a 1995 book as a source for that ambiguous claim doesn't seem right. I think that removing that sentence altogether wouldn't hurt the flow of the paragraph. The first and third sentences connect nicely over the issue of Saddam while the second adds really nothing more than the cliché of the "common enemy" and is badly sourced. I think that sentence needs to be removed. Merckill95 (talk) 18:43, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Swing
POTUS election articles would be greatly improved if a percentage point swing was included in popular vote as reported in the infobox. See legislative elections in the United States and other nations on Wikipedia for reference. 108.56.152.243 (talk) 05:36, 6 December 2021 (UTC)