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 won every state with comfortable margins: his worst performance was in
New Hampshire, where he received 79.8% of the vote. The only human challenger to receive over 5% of the vote in any state was Bill Wyatt from California, who
received 10% of the vote in Oklahoma in a minor upset. "
Uncommitted" also received over 5% of the vote in
Massachusetts (8.7%),
Rhode Island (12.4%) and
Texas (7.5%). 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, Florida, Mississippi, New York, Puerto Rico, and South Dakota. 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. He would later change his party affiliation to
Democratic and run in
that party's 2016 presidential primaries. 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. == Candidates ==