2004 Democratic Party presidential primaries

2004 Democratic Party presidential primaries

← 2000 January 14 to June 8, 2004 2008 →
4,322 delegates to the Democratic National Convention 2,162 delegates needed to win
Candidate John Kerry John Edwards Home state Massachusetts North Carolina Delegate count 2,573½ 559 Contests won 52 2 Popular vote 9,930,497 3,162,337 Percentage 61.0% 19.4%   Candidate Howard Dean Wesley Clark Home state Vermont Arkansas Delegate count 167½ 60 Contests won 1 1 Popular vote 903,460 547,369 Percentage 5.55% 3.4%
John Kerry   John Edwards   Howard Dean   Wesley Clark
Previous Democratic nominee Al Gore Democratic nominee John Kerry

From January 14 to June 8, 2004, voters of the Democratic Party chose its nominee for president in the 2004 United States presidential election.

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts was selected as the nominee through a series of primary elections and caucuses culminating in the 2004 Democratic National Convention held from July 26 to July 29, 2004, in Boston, Massachusetts. Kerry went on to lose the general election on November 2, 2004, to incumbent Republican President George W. Bush.

A Democratic presidential primary held a few years after the September 11 attacks and new wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Democratic Party was seen as too soft on national security issues, and John Kerry, a veteran of the Vietnam War, won the trust of Democrats out of hope that his military record would refute this perception. Wesley Clark was another soldier who ran for President.