The 1904 United States presidential election in Florida was held on November 8, 1904. Voter chose five representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for President and Vice-president.
With the disfranchisement of African-Americans by a poll tax in 1889, Florida became a one-party Democratic state, which it was to remain until the 1950sâÂÂapart from the anti-Catholic vote against Al Smith in 1928. Unlike Texas with its German settlements in the Edwards Plateau, or those Southern states that extended into the Appalachian Mountains or Ozarks, Florida completely lacked upland or German refugee whites opposed to secession. Thus, Florida's Republican Party between 1872 and 1888 was entirely dependent upon black votes, a fact graphically seen when one considers that â although very few blacks in Florida had ever voted within the previous fifty-five years â at the time of the landmark court case of Smith v. Allwright (1944), half of Florida's registered Republicans were still black. Thus, disfranchisement of blacks and poor whites left Florida as devoid of Republican adherents as Louisiana, Mississippi or South Carolina.
Nevertheless, Florida's one-party Democratic rule was to be marginally interrupted in the 1900s by considerable Socialist and Populist growth, centered in Tampa and Jacksonville, and southern Lee County with its "Koreshan Unity" sect. Immigrants and farmers fearing loss of tenure were able to give over ten percent of the vote in several counties of Central and South Florida to Eugene V. DebsâÂÂin the second of his five Presidential runsâÂÂand substantial votes in many pineywoods counties to Populist Thomas E. Watson. However, this did not threaten the Democrats' monopoly on statewide power except in Calhoun County, which Democratic nominee Alton B. Parker held by just two votes and which William Jennings Bryan was to lose in 1908.
Florida was won by the Democratic nominees, former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals Alton B. Parker and his running mate, former US Senator Henry G. Davis of West Virginia. They defeated the Republican nominees, incumbent President Theodore Roosevelt of New York and his running mate Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana. Parker won the state by a landslide margin of 47.65%.