Oregon has two major political parties, Democratic and Republican. Partly because of the role the direct primary system plays in choosing nominees, party organization is relatively weak. There is a strong tradition of political independence, evidenced in 1976 when Oregon gave independent presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy 3.9% of the vote—his highest percentage in any state—a total that probably cost Jimmy Carter Oregon's then six electoral votes. Another independent, John Anderson, won 112,389 votes (9.5%) in the 1980 presidential election.
Democrat Barbara Roberts was elected governor in 1990. She did not run for reelection in 1994, and Dr. John Kitzhaber, a Democrat who designed Oregon's health care rationing system, defeated Republican congressman Denny Smith to become governor. Kitzhaber won a second term in 1998. In 2002, Democrat Ted Kulongoski won the governorship.
Oregonians elected two US senators in 1996. In a special election in January, Democrat Ron Wyden was chosen to serve the remainder of Robert Packwood's term after Packwood resigned from the Senate due to allegations of sexual misconduct; Wyden was elected to his first full term in 1998. In the November 1996 election, Republican Gordon Smith won the seat vacated by five-term senator Mark Hatfield; he was reelected in 2002. Following 2002 elections, all but one of the state's five US representatives were Democrats.
In mid-2003 there were an equal number of Democrats and Republicans in the state senate (15 each) and 35 Republicans and 25 Democrats in the state house. In 2000, Oregon voters gave Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore a very slight victory over Republican George W. Bush. (Gore won by a margin of 6,765 votes out of over 1.5 million cast statewide.) In 2002 there were 1,872,615 registered voters. In 1998, 40% of registered voters were Democratic, 36% Republican, and 24% unaffiliated or members of other parties. The state had seven electoral votes in the 2000 presidential election.