Incumbent Republican president Theodore Roosevelt defeated the conservative Democratic nominee, Alton B. Parker.

After the February 1904 death of McKinley's ally, Senator Mark Hanna, Roosevelt faced little opposition at the 1904 Republican National Convention.

As there was little difference between the candidates' positions, the race was largely based on their personalities; the Democrats argued that the Roosevelt presidency was "arbitrary" and "erratic".

Roosevelt's nomination speech was delivered by former governor Frank S. Black of New York and seconded by Senator Albert J. Beveridge from Indiana.

[3]: 166 Since conservatives in the Republican Party denounced Theodore Roosevelt as a radical, they were allowed to choose the vice-presidential candidate.

Senator Charles W. Fairbanks from Indiana was the obvious choice, since conservatives thought highly of him, yet he managed not to offend the party's more progressive elements.

With solid support from New York, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, Fairbanks was easily placed on the 1904 Republican ticket in order to appease the Old Guard.

[3]: 166–167 The Republican platform insisted on maintenance of the protective tariff, called for increased foreign trade, pledged to uphold the gold standard, favored expansion of the merchant marine, promoted a strong navy, and praised in detail Roosevelt's foreign and domestic policy.

Parker refused to work actively for the nomination, but did nothing to restrain his conservative supporters, among them the sachems of Tammany Hall.

He denounced Judge Parker as a tool of Wall Street before he was nominated and declared that no self-respecting Democrat could vote for him.

Hearst owned eight newspapers, all of them friendly to labor, vigorous in their trust-busting activities, fighting the cause of "the people who worked for a living."

The prospect of having Hearst for a candidate frightened conservative Democrats so much that they renewed their efforts to get Parker nominated on the first ballot.

[7] Before a vice-presidential candidate could be nominated, Parker sprang into action when he learned that the Democratic platform pointedly omitted reference to the monetary issue.

To make his position clear, Parker, after his nomination, informed the convention by letter that he supported the gold standard.

The letter read, "I regard the gold standard as firmly and irrevocably established and shall act accordingly if the action of the convention today shall be ratified by the people.

[11] Davis received the nomination because party leaders believed that as a millionaire mine owner, railroad magnate, and banker, he could be counted on to help finance the campaign.

[11] Parker protested against "the rule of individual caprice," the presidential "usurpation of authority," and the "aggrandizement of personal power."

"[12] The Democratic platform called for reduction in government expenditures and a congressional investigation of the executive departments "already known to teem with corruption"; condemned monopolies; pledged an end to government contracts with companies violating antitrust laws; opposed imperialism; insisted upon independence for the Philippines; and opposed the protective tariff.

It favored strict enforcement of the eight-hour work day; construction of a Panama Canal; the direct election of senators; statehood for the Western territories; the extermination of polygamy; reciprocal trade agreements; cuts in the army; and enforcement of the civil service laws.

The 183 delegates who attended the convention voted unanimously to give the presidential and vice-presidential nominations to Debs and Hanford.

In the first place, Joseph Pulitzer's New York World carried a full-page story about alleged corruption in the Bureau of Corporations.

Secondly, in appointing George B. Cortelyou as his campaign manager, Roosevelt had purposely used his former Secretary of Commerce and Labor.

Only a week before the election, Roosevelt himself called E. H. Harriman, the railroad king, to Washington, D.C., for the purpose of raising funds to carry New York.

Thomas W. Lawson, the Boston millionaire, charged that New York state Senator Patrick Henry McCarren, a prominent Parker backer, was on the payroll of Standard Oil at the rate of twenty thousand dollars a year.

For the first time in that state's history, secret paper ballots, supplied at public expense, and without political symbols of any kind, were issued to each voter.

While Roosevelt's victory nationally was quickly determined, the election in Maryland remained in doubt for several weeks.

Thomas Watson, the Populist candidate, received 117,183 votes and won nine counties (0.33%) in his home state of Georgia.

The distribution of the vote by counties reveals him to have been a weaker candidate than William Jennings Bryan, the party's nominee four years earlier, in every section of the nation, except for the deep South, where Democratic dominance remained strong, due in large part to pervasive disfranchisement of blacks.