United States presidential election in Florida, 2004

Florida was under the national spotlight prior the 2004 Presidential election, being the swing state with the largest number of electoral votes (27), and with the memory of the controversy surrounding the 2000 Florida vote still fresh in the minds of voters. Polls throughout the campaign indicated that Florida was too close to call, prompting concerns about a repeat of the 2000 fiasco. However, the high popularity of George W. Bush's brother, Republican Governor Jeb Bush, contributed to a relatively comfortable victory for Bush, by a margin of 5% over his Democratic rival, John Kerry.

While the South Florida metropolitan area mostly voted for Kerry, the other parts of the state mainly supported Bush, being culturally closer to the rest of the southern United States than to Miami, home to large Hispanic and Jewish populations, as well as retirees and transplants from the largely liberal Northeastern United States.

Key to Bush's victory was increased turnout in Republican areas. Bush's margin of victory in several counties topped 70%, particularly in the Florida Panhandle. Bush also won a significant number of heavily populated and fast-growing areas including the Jacksonville area, the entire Tampa Bay area, Southwest Florida, suburban Orlando, the Space Coast, and Ocala.

"See main article: U.S. presidential election, 2004."

Controversies

During the 2004 U.S. presidential election, numerous allegations of irregularities were made concerning the voting process in Florida. These allegations included missing and uncounted votes, machine malfunction, and a lack of correlation between the vote count and exit polling. Additionally, 58,000 absentee postal vote forms were [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3960679.stm lost] in Broward County; Broward County is heavily Democratic, and Democratic Party officials accused the Republican state government of trying to "steal the election".

Holmes County was pointed to as an example of unusual voting patterns: three-quarters of registered voters in Holmes County are Democrats; however, Republican George W. Bush defeated Democrat John Kerry in Holmes County by a large margin (6,410 to 1,810). However, Holmes County voted for President Bush by a wide margin in 2000 as well, and has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1980.

In many counties, more votes were registered than there were voters in the county, adding up to a total of 268,169 overvotes. [http://ideamouth.com/voterfraud.htm#FL] Bush supporters responded by suggesting that even with 100% support for Kerry, the combined total of all overvotes and missing votes could not have overcome Bush's margin of victory in the state, which was 380,978 votes.

Results by county

External links

* [http://enight.dos.state.fl.us/elections/resultsarchive/Index.asp?ElectionDate=11/2/2004&DATAMODE=/ Official election results]
* [http://enight.dos.state.fl.us/StatusRpt.Asp?ElectionDate=11/2/2004&Datamode=E First set of unofficial returns]