The district was a Republican one. In 2004, 64 percent of the vote in the presidential election went to George W. Bush. Rob Portman never got less than 70 percent of the vote in his campaigns, no Democrat had received more than 38 percent since Thomas A. Luken's narrow loss to Willis D. Gradison in 1974, and no Democrat had won the district in a regular general election since John J. Gilligan in 1964. (Luken held the seat in 1974 after winning a special election to replace William J. Keating, who resigned, but lost the November election for a full term.) Amy Walter of the "Cook Political Report" said the Second District was the fifty-seventh most Republican in America.