Bush defeated U.S. senator John Kerry of Massachusetts to win a second term in office. The election was close: Bush won 286 electoral votes to 251 for Kerry. Bush carried thirty-one states, while Kerry took nineteen states and the District of Columbia. The key state was Ohio with twenty electoral votes. Some charged that there were some voting irregularities in Ohio, but Kerry did not make it a protracted legal matter as Gore had in 2000.