On November 3, 2020, the 59th quadrennial presidential election of the United States of America was held.
The then-incumbent Republican president, Donald Trump was defeated by his opponent, the former vice president, Joe Biden. This election witnessed the highest turnout of voters since 1900 with the two main tickets receiving a popular vote of more than 74 million votes each. This beat the record of 69.5 million votes for Barack Obama in 2008.
The Popular Vote
The 2020 presidential election saw more than 159 million Americans turning out to vote. This was the highest voter turnout ever recorded in US history, and more the first time than 140 million people voted.
Joe Biden had a total of 81.2 million (81,283,098 to be precise) votes, which is 51.3% of the vote. While Donald Trump had 74.2 million votes, 46.8% of the vote.
Joe Biden turned out to be the first president in US history to win an election with over 80 million votes. With exception of Biden, Donald Trump had more popular votes than any other presidential candidate.
However, the popular vote alone cannot determine who wins the presidential election in the U.S as there have been some candidates who had the highest popular votes but could not make it to the presidential seat.
Let’s see the outcome of the Electoral College.
The Electoral College
Joe Biden and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, who is the first Black American female vice president, won both the popular vote and the electoral vote.
The electoral college vote saw Biden beat Trump, 306 to 232. Biden got votes from five swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which saw him take victory. Despite winning the popular vote by nearly seven million votes, small movements in these swing states could have handed Trump victory.
Biden’s electoral college triumph was the reverse of the margin by which Donald Trump won in 2016, as he got a total of 306 votes and called it “a massive landslide victory.”.
Also, in the 2020 election, there was no faithless elector in the electoral college. Faithless electors are those who decline to vote for the candidate they pledged to.
However, in 2016, there were a total of seven faithless electors, and this was the highest number recorded except for the 1872 election, which had sixty-three (63) faithless electors.
How many votes did Trump get in the 2020 US presidential election against Biden?
In 2020, Trump recorded 74 million votes from the popular vote and 232 votes from the Electoral College compared to 81 million votes recorded by Joe Biden and 306 votes from the Electoral College.
However, after the election, Donald Trump demanded a recount of the votes, claiming the results of many states were incorrect. The recount took place, and Joe Biden still emerged as the winner of the 2020 presidential election, with Senator Kamala Harris as his vice president.
