page_title: 2004 United States Senate elections
section_title: Political parties
hierarchical_section_title: 2004 United States Senate elections / Political parties
caption_attribution_description: English: Using en:File:110th_US_Congress_Senate3.PNG[dead link] (which too is a Wikipedia picture, and can be modified per the GNU license) as the "base" for this picture, I created a similar picture, only for the 109th Congress instead. This map shows the senatorial composition by political party and by state, at the start of the 109th Congress.
context_page_description: The 2004 United States Senate elections were held on November 2, 2004, with all Class 3 Senate seats being contested. They coincided with the re-election of George W. Bush as president and the United States House election, as well as many state and local elections. Senators who were elected in 1998, known as Senate Class 3, were seeking re-election or retiring in 2004. This was the third consecutive election for Senate Class 3 where the Democrats either broke even or lost seats. This also marked the first time since 1980 in which a presidential candidate from either party won with coattails in the Senate. As of 2018, these are the last elections held during a Presidential election year in which the Republicans made a net gain of seats.
context_section_description: The Senate, as of the pre-election 108th Congress, was composed of 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and 1 independent. (The independent, Jim Jeffords of Vermont, was allied with the Democratic caucus and had voted with Democrats to give them the majority in the past.) The Democrats, therefore, needed to make a net gain of at least two seats from retiring or incumbent Republicans to gain control of the Senate (one seat if Kerry won the presidency). In the election, incumbent senators won reelection in all races but one (Democratic leader Tom Daschle, in South Dakota, lost to Republican John Thune). The seats of retiring senators were taken by the opposing party in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina. In fact, the only retiring senator whose seat was taken by a member of his party was Republican Don Nickles of Oklahoma, who was succeeded by Tom Coburn.
  Republicans gained four seats in the 2004 elections, and entered the 109th Congress with a 55–44–1 lead. While such a majority is formidable, it is still less than the 60 seats needed to override a filibuster and completely control the body's agenda and procedures.
caption: Senate composition following the 2004 elections.
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