1,549,708 1,204,584 Start date November 2, 2004 | 55.0% 42.7% | |
Murray
40-50%
50-60%
60-70% Nethercutt
40-50%
50-60%
60-70% | ||
The 2004 United States Senate election in Washington was held on November 2, 2004. Incumbent Democrat U.S. Senator Patty Murray won re-election. She became only the fourth Washington senator to win 3 consecutive terms, just after fellow Democrats Warren G. Magnuson and Scoop Jackson.
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Term limits became an issue in the campaign, as Democrats seized on Nethercutt's broken term-limits pledge that he had made when he unseated Speaker Tom Foley in 1994. Nethercutt was also hampered by his lack of name recognition in the more densely populated western part of the state, home to two-thirds of the state's population. Washington has not elected a Senator from east of the Cascades since Miles Poindexter in 1916. Other important issues included national security and the war in Iraq. Nethercutt supported the invasion of Iraq, while Murray opposed it. Nethercutt was a heavy underdog from the start, and his campaign never gained much traction. In November, he lost by 12 points, receiving 43 percent of the vote to Murray's 55 percent.