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 County results Murray: 40–50% 50–60% 60–70% Nethercutt: 40-50% 50-60% 60-70% | |||||||||||||||||
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| Elections in Washington |
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The 2004 United States Senate election in Washington was held on November 2, 2004. Incumbent Democrat U.S. Senator Patty Murray won re-election to a third term, defeating Republican U.S. Representative George Nethercutt. She became only the fourth Washington senator to win 3 consecutive terms, just after fellow Democrats Warren G. Magnuson and Scoop Jackson[citation needed]. Nethercutt was known for having defeated Tom Foley, the sitting Speaker of the House of Representatives, as part of the 1994 Republican wave.
Term limits became an issue in the campaign, as Democrats seized on Nethercutt's broken term-limits pledge that he had made when he had unseated Foley in 1994. Geography was also against Nethercutt, who was severely 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 Clarence Dill in 1928. Other important issues included national security and the war in Iraq. Nethercutt supported the invasion of Iraq, while Murray opposed it.
Nethercutt was considered 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. He only carried two counties west of the Cascades.