The Election of 2004 was the 55th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 2004. Incumbent President and Democrat Joe Lieberman ran for a second and final term. Lieberman's opponent, Senator John McCain, lacked the full backing of the conservative wing of the Republican Party and Lieberman was popular, so a victory for the charismatic Lieberman was inevitable. He won the electoral vote by a larger margin than he had won in 2000, while the popular vote margin was slightly smaller. His popular vote count (67,797,222) is one of the largest popular vote counts in history, only beaten by Marco Rubio’s 69,799,823 in 2008.