Washington never went for a full-fledged Democrat in a presidential election until 1932, when Franklin D. Roosevelt won the first of four successive victories in the state. Until then, Washington had generally voted Republican, the lone exceptions being 1896, when the state's Populist voters carried Washington for William Jennings Bryan, and 1912, when a plurality of the voters chose Theodore Roosevelt on the Progressive ticket.
The rise of the Democratic Party after World War II was linked to the careers of two US senators—Henry Jackson, who held his seat from 1953 until his death in 1983, and Warren Magnuson, defeated in 1980 after serving since 1945.
During the 1970s and 1980s the state tended to favor Republicans in presidential elections, but Democrats more than held their own in other contests. Washingtonians elected a Democratic governor, Dixy Lee Ray, in 1976, but in 1980 they chose a Republican, John Spellman; in 1984, they returned to the Democratic column, electing Booth Gardner. Mike Lowry, also a Democrat, was elected governor in 1992. He was succeeded, in 1997, by fellow Democrat Gary Locke. Locke was reelected in 2000, but in 2003, announced he would not seek reelection in 2004.
In November 2000, Democrat Maria Cantwell was elected to the US Senate. Washington's other senator, Democrat Patty Murray, was elected to a second term in 1998. A stunning Republican victory in the 1994 mid-term elections saw, for the first time since 1860, a sitting Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Thomas S. Foley, lose his seat in the House. The winner was a little-known Republican, George Nethercutt, who called for change and received support from conservative national talk show hosts and former presidential candidate Ross Perot. Nethercutt was reelected in 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002. Following the 2002 elections, three of Washington's nine US Representatives were Republicans; the other six were Democrats. There were 25 Republicans and 24 Democrats serving in the state senate, and 52 Democrats and 46 Republicans in the state house in mid-2003.
Democratic candidate Al Gore received 50% of Washington's popular vote in the 2000 presidential election; Republican George W. Bush received 45%, and Green Party candidate Ralph Nader garnered 4%. In 2002 there were 3,209,648 registered voters; there is no party registration in the state. The state had 11 electoral votes in the 2000 presidential election.