2020 United States census, Citizenship question debate, Subsequent actions
Separate from the events in the courts, Trump has said he also considered using an executive order to place the citizenship question on the census. However, on July 11 he issued Executive Order 13880 directing the Department of Commerce to obtain citizenship data from other federal agencies rather than via the census. He added that "we are not backing down in our effort to determine the citizenship status of the United States population" and that data from other federal agencies would be "far more accurate" than a census question.


2020 United States census, Citizenship question debate, Subsequent actions
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said that although the DOJ had agreed with Ross's plan to include the question, "Today's executive order represents an alternative path to collecting the best citizenship data now available, which is vital for informed policymaking and numerous other reasons. Accordingly, the department will promptly inform the courts that the government will not include a citizenship question on the 2020 decennial census." Besides federal agencies, the Department of Commerce is obtaining citizenship data from state records.


2020 United States census, Citizenship question debate, Subsequent actions
Joe Biden, on his first day of his presidency on January 20, 2021, issued an executive order that revoked both Trump's July 11 executive order and Trump's July 21 memo, as to have the census follow the standard practice of including the counts of undocumented immigrants within the final numbers.


2020 United States census, Citizenship question debate, Subsequent actions
Other actions ordered by the Trump administration on the census, including a directive for the Census Bureau to use government records to produce block-level citizenship data, a March 2018 order by Ross for the Bureau to start compiling government records on citizenship, and a July 2019 regulatory filing regarding producing citizen voting age population data "that states may use in redistricting" have yet to be addressed.


2020 United States census, Apportionment challenges, Alabama lawsuit
While the census question was in litigation, the state of Alabama and one of its congressional representatives, Mo Brooks, filed a lawsuit against the Department of Commerce and the Census Bureau in May 2018 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, asserting that the framers of the Constitution never intended for illegal immigrants to be included in the census count or apportionment base. The state believed it would lose a congressional seat to other states that have had increased numbers of immigrants in the last decade.


2020 United States census, Apportionment challenges, Alabama lawsuit
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund sought to intervene on behalf of Latino voters, as well as the city of San Jose, California, and Santa Clara County, California, and King County, Washington, arguing that eliminating of illegal immigrants would affect federal funding for their cities and counties. The motion was granted by the end of 2018.


2020 United States census, Apportionment challenges, Alabama lawsuit
As the census question case continued, the Census Bureau spoke of other means to obtain immigration data, and Barr, referencing the Alabama suit, said that "for example, there is a current dispute over whether illegal aliens can be included for apportionment purposes. Depending on the resolution of that dispute, this data may be relevant to those considerations. We will be studying this issue." Spurred by Barr's comments that the government would not defend itself in the case, a coalition of fifteen states and other groups also moved to intervene, which was granted by September 2019.


2020 United States census, Apportionment challenges, July 2020 memo
On July 21, 2020, President Trump signed a memo to the Department of Commerce, "Memorandum on Excluding Illegal Aliens from the Apportionment Base Following the 2020 Census" with instructions not to include illegal immigrants in the census totals for purposes of apportionment. The memo said the Constitution does not define which "persons" must be included in the apportionment base, and past censuses have excluded some legal immigrants in the country temporarily, justifying the change.


2020 United States census, Apportionment challenges, July 2020 memo
Law and census experts said this was an invalid interpretation as past case law has supported inclusion of "whole persons" including illegal immigrants, and the ACLU immediately said they plan to file a lawsuit against the administration over the memo. Common Cause, the city of Atlanta, and other groups and individuals filed the first suit seeking an injunction to prevent the government from executing on the memo a week after it was signed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.


2020 United States census, Apportionment challenges, July 2020 memo
On September 10, 2020, a three-judge panel of the Federal District Court in Manhattan unanimously rejected the order, ruling that it was so obviously illegal a lawsuit challenging it was unnecessary. Eight days later, the Trump administration filed notice that it would appeal the decision directly to the Supreme Court, bypassing the circuit court appeals process. The Supreme Court accepted the petition on October 16, 2020, and scheduled expedited oral arguments in the case on November 30, 2020.


2020 United States census, Apportionment challenges, July 2020 memo
The Court ruled in a per curiam decision on December 18, 2020, that the case was premature due to lack of standing and ripeness but did not rule on any of the constitutional challenges at the time. The decision vacated the District Court's ruling and remanded the case to the District Court to be dismissed.


2020 United States census, Apportionment challenges, Early completion of count
The Trump administration sought to complete the census count earlier than originally scheduled. In September 2020, federal district court judge Lucy Koh issued a preliminary injunction against the plan to end counting on September 30 rather than the scheduled October 31, saying the Commerce Department "never articulated a satisfactory explanation". She also blocked a plan to deliver the count results to the White House by December 31, rather than the original April 2021 delivery date when Trump might be out of office.


2020 United States census, Apportionment challenges, Early completion of count
On the next business day, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced the count would end October 5, as the administration appealed Koh's decision to the 9th circuit. Koh ordered the government to produce documents to show the Commerce Department's reasoning. The appeals court upheld Koh's ruling, and the Census Bureau announced on October 2 that the count would continue until October 31. Also on October 2, Koh threatened to hold Ross in contempt for repeated violations of her order.


2020 United States census, Apportionment challenges, Early completion of count
The 9th circuit decision was appealed to the Supreme Court. On October 13, in a 7–1 ruling, the court issued an unsigned order granting the request to end the count early. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the lone dissenter, saying that "meeting the deadline at the expense of the accuracy of the census is not a cost worth paying, especially when the Government has failed to show why it could not bear the lesser cost of expending more resources to meet the deadline or continuing its prior efforts to seek an extension from Congress." The count ultimately ended at 5:59 a.m. Eastern Time on October 16, 2020.


2020 United States census, Biden changes
As one of his first acts in office, President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 13986 on January 20, 2021, to discontinue citizenship tabulations at the city-block level using 2020 census data with administrative records. Illegal immigrants in the country will no longer be excluded from the numbers used for apportioning congressional seats among the states.


2020 United States census, Differential privacy
Researchers widely criticized the Census Bureau for intentionally making block-level data inaccurate by using differential privacy. In order to purportedly prevent identification of individuals' age, gender, race, household relationships, or homeownership, noise was added to the data, shifting individuals between blocks, towns, or other units. This can result in substantial discrepancies in minority populations and the sizes of small places. For example, Monowi, Nebraska, known for being the country's smallest incorporated municipality, was incorrectly reported to have two residents instead of one. Redistricting data would also be corrupted, making equal-size districts and majority-minority districts more difficult.


2020 United States elections
The 2020 United States elections were held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020. Democratic former vice president Joe Biden defeated incumbent Republican president Donald Trump in the presidential election. Despite losing seats in the House of Representatives, Democrats retained control of the House and gained control of the Senate. As a result, the Democrats successfully obtained a government trifecta, the first time since the elections in 2008 that the party gained unified control of Congress and the presidency.


2020 United States elections
With Trump losing his bid for re-election, he became the first single-term incumbent president to have overseen his party lose the presidency and control of both the House and the Senate since Herbert Hoover in 1932.


2020 United States elections
Biden became his party's nominee after defeating several challengers in the Democratic primaries, while Trump faced token opposition in the Republican primaries. In the congressional elections, Democrats lost seats in the House of Representatives but retained their majority in the chamber by a narrow margin. Democrats made a net gain of three seats in the Senate for a total of 50 seats, taking control of the chamber as newly elected vice-president Kamala Harris could cast tie-breaking votes. Contests for the six non-voting congressional delegates from the District of Columbia and the permanently inhabited U.S. territories were also held during the 2020 elections.


2020 United States elections
Regularly-scheduled elections were held in 86 of the 99 state legislative chambers, and 11 states held their gubernatorial elections. Only one state governorship and two legislative chambers changed partisan control, as Republicans won the gubernatorial race in Montana and gained control of both legislative chambers in New Hampshire. Various other state executive and judicial elections, as well as numerous referendums, tribal elections, mayoral elections, and other local elections, also took place in 2020. The 2020 elections were the last major set of elections to impact the redistricting cycle that will take place following the 2020 Census.


2020 United States elections
Significant issues for voters included the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as well as health care, the economy, racial unrest and climate change. Social distancing guidelines resulted in unprecedented levels of postal voting and early voting. Voter turnout greatly exceeded recent elections; one projection has turnout by voting eligible population being higher than any election since 1900. After Biden won the election, Trump and other Republicans refused to concede, making disproven allegations of widespread voter fraud. These attempts to overturn the election resulted in a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, itself resulting in Trump being banned from Twitter.


2020 United States elections, Federal elections, Presidential election
The U.S. presidential election of 2020 was the 59th quadrennial U.S. presidential election, and was held to fill a term lasting from January 20, 2021 to January 20, 2025. By November 7, all major media organizations had projected that former vice president Joe Biden, the candidate of the Democratic Party, had defeated incumbent Republican president Donald Trump in the election.


2020 United States elections, Federal elections, Presidential election
Based on the winner of the popular vote in each state, the Electoral College cast votes on December 14, and Congress counted the electoral votes and formally declared Biden as the election winner in a joint session on January 6, 2021. In the months after the election, Trump challenged the results of the election, but on January 7, following congressional certification of the electoral vote and the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, Trump acknowledged that "a new administration will be inaugurated."


2020 United States elections, Federal elections, Presidential election
Biden won the election with 306 electoral votes and 51.3% of the national popular vote, compared to Trump's 232 electoral votes and 46.9% of the popular vote. Biden won every state that 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won in the 2016 presidential election, as well as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nebraska's second congressional district. Biden won the tipping-point state, Wisconsin, by a margin of 0.6%. Among third party and independent candidates, Libertarian Party candidate Jo Jorgensen won 1.2% of the popular vote, Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins finished with 0.3% of the vote, and various other candidates won about 0.4% of the vote.


2020 United States elections, Federal elections, Presidential election
President Trump won re-nomination by his party after facing token opposition in the 2020 Republican primaries. The Republican Party also re-nominated Vice President Mike Pence as Trump's running mate for the 2020 election. Biden became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee in early April 2020 after Bernie Sanders withdrew from the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries; Biden later chose Kamala Harris as his running mate shortly before the 2020 Democratic National Convention. Along with Biden and Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Tulsi Gabbard all won at least one delegate in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. Beyond the two major parties, about 1,200 individuals listed their names with the federal government as third party and independent candidates.


2020 United States elections, Federal elections, Presidential election
Biden is the oldest individual to win a presidential election, and Kamala Harris is the first woman to be elected vice president. Trump's defeat made him the first incumbent president to lose re-election since George H. W. Bush in the 1992 presidential election, and the tenth elected president to lose his re-election bid. He also became the first elected president to lose the popular vote twice since Benjamin Harrison in the late 19th century; and the first president ever to be elected while losing the popular vote, to then be impeached, and to then lose reelection as an incumbent.


2020 United States elections, Federal elections, Presidential election
Accounting for the Democratic gain of the House in 2018, 2020 represented the first time since the 1930 and 1932 elections, as well as the sixth time overall, that an opposition party flipped control of the White House and both houses of Congress from the prior governing party following a single presidential term.


2020 United States elections, Federal elections, Presidential election
Biden became the first U.S. presidential candidate to win over 80 million total votes, won the highest share of the popular vote of any challenger to an incumbent president since the 1932 presidential election, and won the popular vote by the largest margin since Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election. The Democratic victory in the national popular vote marked the seventh time in eight elections that Democrats won the national popular vote, although Republicans won the majority of the electoral vote (and thus the election) in three of those eight elections.


2020 United States elections, Federal elections, Congressional elections, Senate elections
Thirty-five of the 100 seats in the United States Senate were up for election in 2020: all 33 seats of Senate Class II, and seats in Arizona and Georgia that were up for special elections. Republicans defended 23 seats, while Democrats defended 12 seats. Prior to the 2020 election, and including seats not up for election, Republicans held 53 Senate seats, while Democrats held 45 seats, and Democratic-aligned independents held the remaining two seats. Because the vice president has the casting vote in the Senate, Democrats needed to achieve a net gain of at least three seats to achieve control if they won the vice presidency; otherwise, they needed to achieve a net gain of at least four seats to take the majority.


2020 United States elections, Federal elections, Congressional elections, Senate elections
Five seats changed partisan control in the 2020 elections, as Democrats defeated both Republican incumbents in Georgia, as well as the Republican incumbents in the seats up in Arizona and Colorado. Republicans picked up one seat by defeating the Democratic incumbent in Alabama. The results of the 2020 cycle left both partisan caucuses with 50 senators. Democrats gained majority control of the Senate on January 20, 2021, when Vice President-elect Harris and senators Alex Padilla, Jon Ossoff, and Raphael Warnock were sworn into office. Democrats gained control of the Senate for the first time since they lost control in the 2014 United States Senate elections.


2020 United States elections, Federal elections, Congressional elections, House of Representatives elections
All 435 voting seats in the United States House of Representatives were up for election; 218 seats are necessary for a majority. The winners of each race serve a two-year term. Democrats had gained control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 elections, winning 235 seats compared to 199 seats for Republicans. Due to vacancies and party-switching that arose during the 116th Congress, immediately before the November 2020 elections Democrats held 232 seats, compared to 197 seats held by Republicans and one seat, that of Justin Amash, held by the Libertarian Party. Thus, Republicans needed to gain 21 seats to gain a majority.


2020 United States elections, Federal elections, Congressional elections, House of Representatives elections
Republicans picked up 15 seats in the House elections, defeating twelve incumbent House Democrats. Nationally, Democratic House candidates won by a margin of about 3%, as many Democrats ran behind Biden. The election results left Democrats with a narrow majority of 222 seats at the start of the 117th Congress.


2020 United States elections, Federal elections, Congressional elections, House of Representatives elections
Five special elections were held in 2020 to replace a member who resigned or died in office during the 116th U.S. Congress:


2020 United States elections, State elections, Gubernatorial
Elections were held for the governorships of 11 U.S. states and two U.S. territories. Most elections were for four-year terms, but the governors of New Hampshire and Vermont each serve two-year terms. Republicans defended a total of seven seats, while Democrats defended six seats. Only one state governorship changed parties, as Republican Greg Gianforte won the 2020 Montana gubernatorial election, succeeding outgoing Democratic Governor Steve Bullock. In Puerto Rico, the governorship was retained by the New Progressive Party, although the winning candidate, Pedro Pierluisi, is affiliated with the Democratic Party, replacing an incumbent who was affiliated with the Republican Party.


2020 United States elections, State elections, Legislative
Regularly-scheduled elections were held in 86 of the 99 state legislative chambers in the United States; nationwide, regularly-scheduled elections were held for 5,876 of the 7,383 legislative seats. Many legislative chambers had all legislative seats up for election, but some legislative chambers that use staggered elections held elections for only a portion of the total seats in the chamber. Although most states held regularly-scheduled elections for both legislative chambers, Alabama, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia did not hold state legislative elections, and Michigan held elections only for the lower house. Nebraska, the only state that does not have a bicameral state legislature, held elections for half of the seats in its lone legislative chamber.


2020 United States elections, State elections, Legislative
A total of two legislative chambers changed partisan control in 2020, as Republicans gained control of both chambers in New Hampshire. This represented the fewest partisan changes in state legislatures since 1944.


2020 United States elections, State elections, Legislative
Prior to the November 2020 elections, Democrats held 15 "trifectas" (control of the governor's office and both legislative chambers), Republicans held 20 trifectas, and 14 states have a divided government. Not included in this tally is Nebraska, as its legislature officially recognizes no party affiliations. Nationwide, Republicans controlled approximately 60 percent of the legislative chambers and 52 percent of the legislative seats. The 2020 elections created at least two new trifectas, as the New Hampshire and Montana state government shifted from divided government to Republican control.


2020 United States elections, State elections, Attorney General
Regularly-scheduled elections were held in 10 of 43 states that elect attorneys general. The previous Attorney General elections for this group of states took place in 2016, except in Vermont where Attorneys General only serve two-year terms and elected their current Attorney General in 2018. Nine state Attorneys General ran for reelection and eight won, while Republican Tim Fox of Montana could not run again due to term limits and Republican Curtis Hill of Indiana was eliminated in the Republican convention.


2020 United States elections, State elections, Other state elections
In 2020, 82 state supreme court seats are up for election in 35 states. This constitutes 24% of all state supreme court seats in the country. Various other state courts will also hold elections in 2020. Various state executive positions are also up for election in 2020.


2020 United States elections, State elections, Referendums and ballot measures
In the 2020 elections, voters considered a number of referendums, initiatives, ballot measures, and state constitutional amendments on a variety of topics, ranging from Medicaid expansion to marijuana legalization to voting rights. Since the murder of George Floyd and subsequent protests, there were at least 20 police-related ballot measures across the country, including in California, Illinois, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington.


2020 United States elections, State elections, Referendums and ballot measures
Several proposed referendums failed to secure the necessary number of signatures to appear on ballots due to disruptions and social distancing measures undertaken after the COVID-19 pandemic. These included an effort in Ohio to raise the state's hourly minimum wage from $8.70 to $13; an anti-gerrymandering efforts in Oklahoma and Arkansas; and a California effort to allow electronic signatures for future California ballot measures.


2020 United States elections, State elections, Impact on redistricting
Following the 2020 United States Census, the state delegations to the U.S. House of Representatives will undergo reapportionment, and both the U.S. House of Representatives and the state legislatures will undergo redistricting. In states without redistricting commissions, the legislators and governors elected between 2017 and 2020 will draw the new congressional and state legislative districts that will take effect starting with the 2022 elections. State supreme courts can also have a significant effect on redistricting, as demonstrated in states such as Pennsylvania and Virginia. Thus the 2020 elections had a significant impact on the 2020 United States redistricting cycle. Barring court orders or mid-decade redistricting, the districts drawn in the redistricting cycle will remain in place until the next round of redistricting begins in 2030.


2020 United States elections, State elections, Impact on redistricting
In the 2020 elections, the Republican Party won several legislative chambers and gubernatorial positions that had been selected by Democrats as key redistricting targets. Republicans flipped control of the New Hampshire legislature, defended the governorship of Missouri, retained control of both legislative chambers in Iowa, North Carolina, and Texas, and gained a super-majority in both chambers of the Kansas legislature, giving the party control of the key redistricting institutions in those states. Republicans also retained control of the Pennsylvania legislature and Minnesota Senate, ensuring divided partisan control of redistricting in both states. Additionally, the passage of a referendum in Virginia removed control of redistricting from the Democratic-controlled legislature to an independent commission. However, in New York, Democrats gained a two-thirds super-majority in the State Senate and held their super-majority in the State Assembly, giving the party full control of redistricting.


2020 United States elections, Territorial elections
The U.S. territories of American Samoa and Puerto Rico held gubernatorial and legislative elections in 2020, while Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands held legislative elections. Along with Washington, D.C., each territory also held elections for a non-voting delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives. All non-voting delegates serve two-year terms, with the exception of the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico, a non-voting position with a four-year term. Washington, D.C., also held elections for its shadow representative and one of its two shadow senators. The five territories also took part in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries and the 2020 Republican Party presidential primaries.


2020 United States elections, Local elections, Mayoral elections
Since the beginning of 2020, various major cities have seen incumbent mayors re-elected, including Bakersfield (Karen Goh), Fremont (Lily Mei), and Sacramento, California (Darrell Steinberg); Baton Rouge, Louisiana (Sharon Weston Broome); Chesapeake (David West), Fairfax City (David Meyer), Fredericksburg (Mary Katherine Greenlaw), Hampton (Donnie Tuck), Richmond (Levar Stoney), and Virginia Beach, Virginia (Bobby Dyer); Glendale (Jerry Weiers), Mesa (John Giles), and Phoenix, Arizona (Kate Gallego); Irving (Rick Stopfer) and Lubbock, Texas (Dan Pope); Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Tom Barrett); Portland, Oregon (Ted Wheeler); Salt Lake County, Utah (Jenny Wilson); Wilmington, Delaware (Mike Purzycki); Winston-Salem, North Carolina (Allen Joines); and Bayamón, Puerto Rico (Ramón Luis Rivera Jr.).


2020 United States elections, Local elections, Mayoral elections
In Norfolk, Virginia, Mayor Kenny Alexander was unopposed in seeking reelection, as was Mayor John Cruz in Hagåtña, Guam. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, incumbent mayor G. T. Bynum earned reelection by winning an outright majority in the August primary.


2020 United States elections, Local elections, Mayoral elections
Open mayoral seats were won in Clearwater (Frank Hibbard) and Miami-Dade County, Florida (Daniella Levine Cava); Fresno (Jerry Dyer), Riverside (Patricia Lock Dawson), San Diego (Todd Gloria), and Santa Ana, California (Vicente Sarmiento); Gilbert (Brigette Peterson) and Scottsdale, Arizona (David Ortega); Honolulu, Hawaiʻi (Rick Blangiardi); and San Juan, Puerto Rico (Miguel Romero).


2020 United States elections, Local elections, Mayoral elections
In Baltimore, Maryland, city council president Democrat Brandon Scott was elected to replace incumbent Democrat Jack Young who came in fifth in a crowded primary. In Stockton, California, Kevin Lincoln defeated one-term incumbent mayor Michael Tubbs, who was first Black mayor of the city and the youngest person elected to the position when he unseated incumbent mayor Anthony Silva in 2016. In Texas, two mayoral runoff elections in December saw incumbents defeated: In Corpus Christi, city councilwoman Paulette Guajardo defeated incumbent Joe McComb, and in El Paso, former mayor Oscar Leeser unseated one-term incumbent Dee Margo.


2020 United States elections, Local elections, Mayoral elections
In Ely, Minnesota, Eric Urbas defeated three-term incumbent mayor Chuck Novack despite Urbas having dropped out of the race in August. In Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, incumbent Brynneth Pawltro was ousted by Wilbur Beast, a 6-month-old French bulldog. The town has never had a human mayor; Pawltro is a pit bull terrier.


2020 United States elections, Local elections, Mayoral elections, Mayoral recalls
Several mayors faced recall campaigns during 2020. Mayors in Broken Bow, Nebraska; Diamond City, Arkansas; Heyburn, Idaho; and Oregon City, Oregon, were removed from office. Mayors in Elizabeth and Idaho Springs, Colorado; Humboldt, Nebraska; Powers, Oregon; Stevensville, Montana; and Westminster, California were retained in office.


2020 United States elections, Tribal elections
A number of Native American tribal governments held elections for tribal leadership in 2020. As with other elections in the country, the coronavirus pandemic disrupted many elections, delaying primaries and shifting some voting from in-person to postal.


2020 United States elections, Tribal elections
The Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation reelected President Bernadine Burnette; the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians reelected Tribal Chairman Aaron A. Payment; Oneida Nation of Wisconsin reelected Chairman Tehassi Hill; the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa reelected Tribal Chair Cathy Chavers; the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes reelected President Terri Parton; the Sitka Tribe of Alaska reelected Tribal Chairman Lawrence "Woody" Widmark; and incumbent Tribal Chief Donald (Doc) Slyter was unopposed in seeking reelection to lead the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians. Stephanie Bryan, the first woman to serve as chair of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, also won reelection. United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians incumbent Tribal Chief Joe Bunch, who was impeached but not removed from office in January 2020, was re-elected.


2020 United States elections, Tribal elections
In a runoff election, former South Dakota state senator Kevin Killer defeated inclumbent Oglala Lakota Tribe president Julian Running Bear, who made the runoff by a single vote after surviving an impeachment effort in September. Crow Nation Senator Frank White Clay defeated incumbent tribal chairman A.J. Not Afraid Jr. Kristopher Peters was elected Squaxin Island Tribe tribal council chairman, defeating incumbent Arnold Cooper, and Joseph Tali Byrd defeated long-time Quapaw Nation Business Committee Chairman John Berrey. Durell Cooper defeated incumbent Apache Tribe of Oklahoma Tribal Chairman Bobby Komardley. Walter R. Echo-Hawk was unopposed in a special election for president of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma Business Council following the April 2020 recall of the prior president, James Whiteshirt. The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community elected Keith Anderson tribal chairman, replacing the retiring Charlie Vig.


2020 United States elections, Tribal elections
Three Minnesota Chippewa Tribe bands had candidates win more than 50% of the votes in June primaries, eliminating the need for a general election: Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe incumbent tribal chair Faron Jackson Sr., White Earth Nation incumbent chief executive Michael Fairbanks, and, on the Grand Portage Indian Reservation, challenger Bobby Deschampe, who defeated incumbent tribal chair Beth Drost.


2020 United States elections, Tribal elections
Northern Cheyenne voters elected five women to the tribal council, along with electing Donna Marie Fisher as tribal president and Serena Wetherelt as vice president. It is the first time women will make up the majority on the Northern Cheyenne tribal council.


2020 United States elections, Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
Starting in March 2020, elections across the United States were delayed and disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Numerous states delayed presidential primaries, while Alabama delayed the Republican primary Senatorial run-off and North Carolina and Mississippi delayed Republican primary run-off for congressional seats. Iowa, Missouri, South Carolina, and Texas all delayed municipal elections, and in New York City the special election for Queens borough president was cancelled. The pandemic also led to the postponement of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, and both the 2020 Democratic National Convention and the 2020 Republican National Convention were held virtually.


2020 United States elections, Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
To help enforce social distancing, many states expanded absentee and vote-by-mail options for 2020 primary elections and the November general elections. Several elections, including Democratic primaries in Alaska and Hawaiʻi, as well as the Maryland 7th congressional district special election, were conducted entirely with mail-in ballots only.


2020 United States elections, Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
While the pandemic was impacting a number of things in elections 2020, Donald Trump was reported of planning to host his Election Night party at the White House. Two officials informed that Trump was planning a large indoor party of nearly 400 people at the East Room. The Trump Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue was initially chosen as the venue, but this was later changed due to the coronavirus restrictions that limited such gatherings to 50 people.


2020 United States elections, Turnout
With many states easing rules on early voting in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 election saw an unprecedented rate of early voting. By October 26, with eight days remaining until the election, the total early vote throughout the United States had eclipsed that of 2016. In total, about 100 million voters cast early votes, compared to the approximately 57 million early votes cast in 2016. Democrats disproportionately voted by mail, while Republicans tended to vote more frequently in person.


2020 United States elections, Turnout
Just under 160 million people voted in the 2020 elections, compared to a turnout of approximately 137 million in the 2016 presidential election. Michael McDonald projects that about 67% of the voting eligible population voted in 2020, the highest rate of voter participation since the 1900 election.


2020 United States elections, Turnout
The 2020 elections saw the highest rate of voter participation by voting eligible population since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which prohibits denial of the right to vote on the basis of gender, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting, and the Twenty-sixth Amendment, which effectively lowered the national voting age from 21 to 18.


2020 United States elections, Public perceptions and analysis
In a poll conducted in 2019, 59% of respondents expressed that they are not confident in the "honesty of U.S. elections". In an August 2020 survey, 49% of respondents said that they expect voting to be "difficult", up from 15% in 2018; 75% of Republicans, but less than half of Democrats were confident that the elections "will be conducted fairly and accurately".


2020 United States elections, Public perceptions and analysis
In a October 2020 survey, 47% of respondents disagreed with the statement that the election "is likely to be fair and honest", 51% would not "generally agree on who is the legitimately elected president of the United States"; 56% said that they expect "an increase in violence as a result of the election". 49% of college students polled in September 2020 said that the elections won't be "fair and open", 55% that "it will not be administered well", and 81% that "special interest groups have more influence over election outcomes than voters".


2020 United States elections, Public perceptions and analysis
According to an October 2020 poll, eight out of ten Americans consider misinformation a "major problem"; Biden supporters were more likely than Trump supporters to trust the news media and their candidate's messaging.


2020 United States elections, Public perceptions and analysis
According to political scientist Gary C. Jacobson, "The 2020 elections extended several long-term trends in American electoral politics that were driven to new extremes by the singularly divisive person and presidency of Donald J. Trump. The election set new records for electoral continuity, party loyalty, nationalization, polarization, and presidential influence on the down-ballot vote choices, to the point where local factors such as incumbency, candidate quality, and campaign spending barely registered in the congressional election results."


2020 United States elections, Issues
During the campaign, the most prominent issues were the COVID-19 pandemic, health care, economy, race, and abortion. Democrats emphasized coronavirus economic relief and public health measures such as contact tracing, face mask usage, and social distancing, whereas Republican downplayed the coronavirus, scuttled coronavirus economic relief negotiations in the lead-up to the election, and advocated for laxer public health measures to deal with the spread of the coronavirus. Trump himself held events across the country, including in coronavirus hotspots, where attendees did not wear masks and were not socially distancing; at the same time, he mocked those who wore face masks.


2020 United States elections, Issues
The Republican Party opted not to provide a comprehensive platform of its policy positions for the election; the 2020 platform was a one-page resolution which stated that the party "has and will continue to enthusiastically support the president's America-first agenda." Democrats ran on protecting and expanding the Affordable Care Act, while criticizing Republicans for jeopardizing protections for individuals with preexisting conditions. Republicans generally did not emphasize health care issues, as their opposition to the Affordable Care Act had become a political liability by 2020, as the legislation had grown in popularity.


2020 United States elections, Issues
On the environment, Democrats proposed plans to combat climate change, including through investments in renewable energy and rejoining the Paris Climate Accords, whereas Republicans emphasized increased production of oil and natural gas.


2020 United States elections, Issues
During the election campaign, Democrats made calls for criminal justice reform and spoke of a need to reduce systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Republicans ran on a "law and order" and pro-police messaging. While Democrats in many races were moderate, Republicans depicted them as extremists or secret "socialists" who held radical views on criminal justice or climate legislation.


2020 United States elections, Issues
The rhetoric of Trump and his allies during the election campaign was marked by frequent use of falsehoods and promotion of unfounded conspiracy theories. In the lead-up to the elections, Republicans attacked voting rights and spread falsehoods about voter fraud. Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power in case he lost the election. While senior Republicans disapproved of Trump's rhetoric in private, they refused to rebuke him publicly.


2020 United States elections, Table of state, territorial, and federal results
This table shows the partisan results of president, congressional, gubernatorial, and state legislative races held in each state and territory in 2020. Note that not all states and territories held gubernatorial, state legislative, and U.S. Senate elections in 2020. The five territories and Washington, D.C., do not elect members of the U.S. Senate, and the territories do not take part in presidential elections; instead, they each elect one non-voting member of the House. Nebraska's unicameral legislature and the governorship and legislature of American Samoa are elected on a non-partisan basis and therefore political party affiliation is not listed.


2020 United States federal budget
The United States federal budget for fiscal year 2020 ran from October 1, 2019 to September 30, 2020. The government was initially funded through a series of two temporary continuing resolutions. The final funding package was passed as two consolidated spending bills in December 2019, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 () and the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 (). A series of supplemental appropriations bills were passed beginning in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.


2020 United States federal budget, Budget proposals
The Trump administration's budget proposal was released on March 11, 2019.


2020 United States federal budget, Budget proposals
On August 1, 2019, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019 () was passed by the House. The next day, on August 2, 2019, the bill was passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Trump. This act increases spending by $320 billion over levels set in the Budget Control Act of 2011 and removes the possibility of budget sequestration.


2020 United States federal budget, Appropriations legislation
On September 26, 2019, Congress passed the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2020, and Health Extenders Act of 2019 () which contained a continuing resolution lasting until November 21. On November 21, Congress passed the Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2020, and Further Health Extenders Act of 2019 () which extended temporary funding until December 20.


2020 United States federal budget, Appropriations legislation
A final appropriations deal was announced on December 16. The appropriations legislation was divided into two bills: the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 () contained the appropriations acts for Defense, Commerce–Justice–Science, Financial Services and General Government, and Homeland Security, while the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 () contained the remaining acts.


2020 United States federal budget, Appropriations legislation
Supplemental appropriations were passed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic:


2020 United States federal government data breach
In 2020, a major cyberattack suspected to have been committed by a group backed by the Russian government penetrated thousands of organizations globally including multiple parts of the United States federal government, leading to a series of data breaches. The cyberattack and data breach were reported to be among the worst cyber-espionage incidents ever suffered by the U.S., due to the sensitivity and high profile of the targets and the long duration (eight to nine months) in which the hackers had access. Within days of its discovery, at least 200 organizations around the world had been reported to be affected by the attack, and some of these may also have suffered data breaches. Affected organizations worldwide included NATO, the U.K. government, the European Parliament, Microsoft and others.


2020 United States federal government data breach
The attack, which had gone undetected for months, was first publicly reported on December 13, 2020, and was initially only known to have affected the U.S. Treasury Department and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. In the following days, more departments and private organizations reported breaches.


2020 United States federal government data breach
The cyberattack that led to the breaches began no later than March 2020. The attackers exploited software or credentials from at least three U.S. firms: Microsoft, SolarWinds, and VMware. A supply chain attack on Microsoft cloud services provided one way for the attackers to breach their victims, depending upon whether the victims had bought those services through a reseller. A supply chain attack on SolarWinds's Orion software, widely used in government and industry, provided another avenue, if the victim used that software. Flaws in Microsoft and VMware products allowed the attackers to access emails and other documents, and to perform federated authentication across victim resources via single sign-on infrastructure.


2020 United States federal government data breach
In addition to the theft of data, the attack caused costly inconvenience to tens of thousands of SolarWinds customers, who had to check whether they had been breached, and had to take systems offline and begin months-long decontamination procedures as a precaution. U.S. Senator Richard J. Durbin described the cyberattack as tantamount to a declaration of war. President Donald Trump was silent for days after the attack, before suggesting that China, not Russia, might have been responsible for it, and that "everything is well under control".


2020 United States federal government data breach, Background
The global data breach occurred over the course of at least 8 or 9 months during the final year of the presidency of Donald Trump. Throughout this time, the White House lacked a cybersecurity coordinator, Trump having eliminated the post itself in 2018. When the breach was discovered, the U.S. also lacked a Senate-confirmed Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the nation's top cybersecurity official, responsible for coordinating incident response. The incumbent, Chris Krebs, had been fired on November 18, 2020.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Background
Also at that time, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which manages CISA, lacked a Senate-confirmed Secretary, Deputy Secretary, General Counsel, Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis, and Undersecretary for Management; and Trump had recently forced out the Deputy Director of CISA. Numerous federal cybersecurity recommendations made by the Government Accountability Office and others had not been implemented.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Background
SolarWinds, a Texas-based provider of network monitoring software to the U.S. federal government, had shown several security shortcomings prior to the attack. SolarWinds did not employ a chief information security officer or senior director of cybersecurity. Cybercriminals had been selling access to SolarWinds's infrastructure since at least as early as 2017. SolarWinds had been advising customers to disable antivirus tools before installing SolarWinds software. In November 2019, a security researcher had warned SolarWinds that their FTP server was not secure, warning that "any hacker could upload malicious [files]" that would then be distributed to SolarWinds customers. Furthermore, SolarWinds's Microsoft Office 365 account had been compromised, with the attackers able to access emails and possibly other documents.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Background
On December 7, 2020, a few days before trojaned SolarWinds software was publicly confirmed to have been used to attack other organizations, longstanding SolarWinds CEO Kevin Thompson retired. That same day, two private equity firms with ties to SolarWinds's board sold substantial amounts of stock in SolarWinds. The firms denied insider trading.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Methodology
Multiple attack vectors were used in the course of breaching the various victims of the incident.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Methodology, Microsoft exploits
If you think about data that is only available to the CEO, or data that is only available to IT services, [the attacker would get] all of this data.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Methodology, Microsoft exploits
The attackers exploited flaws in Microsoft products, services, and software distribution infrastructure.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Methodology, Microsoft exploits
At least one reseller of Microsoft cloud services was compromised by the attackers, constituting a supply chain attack that allowed the attackers to access Microsoft cloud services used by the reseller's customers.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Methodology, Microsoft exploits
Alongside this, "Zerologon", a vulnerability in the Microsoft authentication protocol NetLogon, allowed attackers to access all valid usernames and passwords in each Microsoft network that they breached. This allowed them to access additional credentials necessary to assume the privileges of any legitimate user of the network, which in turn allowed them to compromise Microsoft Office 365 email accounts.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Methodology, Microsoft exploits
Additionally, a flaw in Microsoft's Outlook Web App may have allowed attackers to bypass multi-factor authentication.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Methodology, Microsoft exploits
Attackers were found to have broken into Microsoft Office 365 in a way that allowed them to monitor NTIA and Treasury staff emails for several months. This attack apparently used counterfeit identity tokens of some kind, allowing the attackers to trick Microsoft's authentication systems. The presence of single sign-on infrastructure increased the viability of the attack.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Methodology, SolarWinds exploit
This is classic espionage. It's done in a highly sophisticated way ... But this is a stealthy operation.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Methodology, SolarWinds exploit
Here, too, the attackers used a supply chain attack. The attackers accessed the build system belonging to the software company SolarWinds, possibly via SolarWinds's Microsoft Office 365 account, which had also been compromised at some point.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Methodology, SolarWinds exploit
The attackers established a foothold in SolarWinds's software publishing infrastructure no later than September 2019. In the build system, the attackers surreptitiously modified software updates provided by SolarWinds to users of its network monitoring software Orion. The first known modification, in October 2019, was merely a proof of concept. Once the proof had been established, the attackers spent December 2019 to February 2020 setting up a command-and-control infrastructure.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Methodology, SolarWinds exploit
In March 2020, the attackers began to plant remote access tool malware into Orion updates, thereby trojaning them. These users included U.S. government customers in the executive branch, the military, and the intelligence services (see Impact section, below). If a user installed the update, this would execute the malware payload, which would stay dormant for 12–14 days before attempting to communicate with one or more of several command-and-control servers. The communications were designed to mimic legitimate SolarWinds traffic.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Methodology, SolarWinds exploit
If able to contact one of those servers, this would alert the attackers of a successful malware deployment and offer the attackers a back door that the attackers could choose to utilise if they wished to exploit the system further. The malware started to contact command-and-control servers in April 2020, initially from North America and Europe and subsequently from other continents too.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Methodology, SolarWinds exploit
The attackers appear to have utilized only a small fraction of the successful malware deployments: ones located within computer networks belonging to high-value targets. Once inside the target networks, the attackers pivoted, installing exploitation tools such as Cobalt strike components, and seeking additional access. Because Orion was connected to customers' Office 365 accounts as a trusted 3rd-party application, the attackers were able to access emails and other confidential documents.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Methodology, SolarWinds exploit
This access apparently helped them to hunt for certificates that would let them sign SAML tokens, allowing them to masquerade as legitimate users to additional on-premises services and to cloud services like Microsoft Azure Active Directory. Once these additional footholds had been obtained, disabling the compromised Orion software would no longer be sufficient to sever the attackers' access to the target network. Having accessed data of interest, they encrypted and exfiltrated it.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Methodology, SolarWinds exploit
The attackers hosted their command-and-control servers on commercial cloud services from Amazon, Microsoft, GoDaddy and others. By using command-and-control IP addresses based in the U.S., and because much of the malware involved was new, the attackers were able to evade detection by Einstein, a national cybersecurity system operated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).


2020 United States federal government data breach, Methodology, SolarWinds exploit
FBI investigators recently found that a separate flaw in software made by SolarWinds Corp was used by hackers tied to another foreign government to help break into U.S. government computers.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Methodology, VMware exploits
Vulnerabilities in VMware Access and VMware Identity Manager, allowing existing network intruders to pivot and gain persistence, were utilized in 2020 by Russian state-sponsored attackers. As of December 18, 2020, while it was definitively known that the SUNBURST trojan would have provided suitable access to exploit the VMware bugs, it was not yet definitively known whether attackers had in fact chained those two exploits in the wild.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Discovery, Microsoft exploits
During 2019 and 2020, cybersecurity firm Volexity discovered an attacker making suspicious usage of Microsoft products within the network of a think tank whose identity has not publicly been revealed. The attacker exploited a vulnerability in the organization's Microsoft Exchange Control Panel, and used a novel method to bypass multi-factor authentication. Later, in June and July 2020, Volexity observed the attacker utilising the SolarWinds Orion trojan; i.e. the attacker used Microsoft vulnerabilities (initially) and SolarWinds supply chain attacks (later on) to achieve their goals. Volexity said it was not able to identify the attacker.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Discovery, Microsoft exploits
Also in 2020, Microsoft detected attackers using Microsoft Azure infrastructure in an attempt to access emails belonging to CrowdStrike. That attack failed because - for security reasons - CrowdStrike does not use Office 365 for email.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Discovery, Microsoft exploits
Separately, in or shortly before October 2020, Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center reported that an apparently state-sponsored attacker had been observed exploiting zerologon, a vulnerability in Microsoft's NetLogon protocol. This was reported to CISA, who issued an alert on October 22, 2020, specifically warning state, local, territorial and tribal governments to search for indicators of compromise, and instructing them to rebuild their networks from scratch if compromised. Using VirusTotal, The Intercept discovered continued indicators of compromise in December 2020, suggesting that the attacker might still be active in the network of the city government of Austin, Texas.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Discovery, SolarWinds exploit
On December 8, 2020, the cybersecurity firm FireEye announced that red team tools had been stolen from it by what it believed to be a state-sponsored attacker. FireEye was believed to be a target of the SVR, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service. FireEye says that it discovered the SolarWinds supply chain attack in the course of investigating FireEye's own breach and tool theft.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Discovery, SolarWinds exploit
After discovering that attack, FireEye reported it to the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), a federal agency responsible for helping to defend the U.S. from cyberattacks. The NSA is not known to have been aware of the attack before being notified by FireEye. The NSA uses SolarWinds software itself.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Discovery, SolarWinds exploit
Some days later, on December 13, when breaches at the Treasury and Department of Commerce were publicly confirmed to exist, sources said that the FireEye breach was related. On December 15, FireEye confirmed that the vector used to attack the Treasury and other government departments was the same one that had been used to attack FireEye: a trojaned software update for SolarWinds Orion.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Discovery, SolarWinds exploit
The security community shifted its attention to Orion. The infected versions were found to be 2019.4 through 2020.2.1 HF1, released between March 2020 and June 2020. FireEye named the malware SUNBURST. Microsoft called it Solorigate. The tool that the attackers used to insert SUNBURST into Orion updates was later isolated by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, who called it SUNSPOT.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Discovery, SolarWinds exploit
Subsequent analysis of the SolarWinds compromise using DNS data and reverse engineering of Orion binaries, by DomainTools and ReversingLabs respectively, revealed additional details about the attacker's timeline.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Discovery, SolarWinds exploit
July 2021 analysis published by the Google Threat Analysis Group found that a "likely Russian government-backed actor" exploited a zero-day vulnerability in fully-updated iPhones to steal authentication credentials by sending messages to government officials on LinkedIn.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Discovery, VMware exploits
Some time before December 3, 2020, the NSA discovered and notified VMware of vulnerabilities in VMware Access and VMware Identity Manager. VMware released patches on December 3, 2020. On December 7, 2020, the NSA published an advisory warning customers to apply the patches because the vulnerabilities were being actively exploited by Russian state-sponsored attackers.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Responsibility, Conclusions by investigators
SolarWinds said it believed the malware insertion into Orion was performed by a foreign nation. Russian-sponsored hackers were suspected to be responsible. U.S. officials stated that the specific groups responsible were probably the SVR or Cozy Bear (also known as APT29). FireEye gave the suspects the placeholder name "UNC2452"; incident response firm Volexity called them "Dark Halo". On December 23, 2020, the CEO of FireEye said Russia was the most likely culprit and the attacks were "very consistent" with the SVR. One security researcher offers the likely operational date, February 27, 2020 with a significant change of aspect on October 30, 2020.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Responsibility, Conclusions by investigators
In January 2021, cybersecurity firm Kaspersky said SUNBURST resembles the malware Kazuar, which is believed to have been created by Turla, a group known from 2008 that Estonian intelligence previously linked to the Russian federal security service, FSB.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Responsibility, Statements by U.S. government officials
On October 22, 2020, CISA and the FBI identified the Microsoft zerologon attacker as Berserk Bear, a state-sponsored group believed to be part of Russia's FSB.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Responsibility, Statements by U.S. government officials
On December 18, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Russia was "pretty clearly" responsible for the cyber attack.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Responsibility, Statements by U.S. government officials
On December 19, U.S. president Donald Trump publicly addressed the attacks for the first time, downplaying its severity and suggesting without evidence that China, rather than Russia, might be responsible. The same day, Republican senator Marco Rubio, acting chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said it was "increasingly clear that Russian intelligence conducted the gravest cyber intrusion in our history."


2020 United States federal government data breach, Responsibility, Statements by U.S. government officials
On December 20, Democratic senator Mark Warner, briefed on the incident by intelligence officials, said "all indications point to Russia."


2020 United States federal government data breach, Responsibility, Statements by U.S. government officials
On December 21, 2020, former Attorney General William Barr said that he agreed with Pompeo's assessment of the origin of the cyberhack and that it "certainly appears to be the Russians," contradicting Trump.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Responsibility, Statements by U.S. government officials
On January 5, 2021, CISA, the FBI, the NSA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, all confirmed that they believe Russia was the most likely culprit. On June 10, 2021, FBI Director Christopher Wray attributed the attack to Russia's SVR specifically.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Responsibility, Denial of involvement
The Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement, "China resolutely opposes and combats any form of cyberattacks and cyber theft."


2020 United States federal government data breach, Impact
SolarWinds said that of its 300,000 customers, 33,000 use Orion. Of these, around 18,000 government and private users downloaded compromised versions.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Impact
Discovery of the breaches at the U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments immediately raised concerns that the attackers would attempt to breach other departments, or had already done so. Further investigation proved these concerns to be well-founded. Within days, additional federal departments were found to have been breached. Reuters quoted an anonymous U.S. government source as saying: “This is a much bigger story than one single agency. This is a huge cyber espionage campaign targeting the U.S. government and its interests.”


2020 United States federal government data breach, Impact
Compromised versions were known to have been downloaded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Justice Department, and some utility companies. Other prominent U.S. organisations known to use SolarWinds products, though not necessarily Orion, were the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Boeing, and most Fortune 500 companies. Outside the U.S., reported SolarWinds clients included parts of the British government, including the Home Office, National Health Service, and signals intelligence agencies; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); the European Parliament; and likely AstraZeneca. FireEye said that additional government, consulting, technology, telecom and extractive entities in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East may also have been affected.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Impact
Through a manipulation of software keys, the hackers were able to access the email systems used by the Treasury Department's highest-ranking officials. This system, although unclassified, is highly sensitive because of the Treasury Department's role in making decisions that move the market, as well as decisions on economic sanctions and interactions with the Federal Reserve.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Impact
Simply downloading a compromised version of Orion was not necessarily sufficient to result in a data breach; further investigation was required in each case to establish whether a breach resulted. These investigations were complicated by: the fact that the attackers had in some cases removed evidence; the need to maintain separate secure networks as organizations' main networks were assumed to be compromised; and the fact that Orion was itself a network monitoring tool, without which users had less visibility of their networks. As of mid-December 2020, those investigations were ongoing.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Impact
As of mid-December 2020, U.S. officials were still investigating what was stolen in the cases where breaches had occurred, and trying to determine how it could be used. Commentators said that the information stolen in the attack would increase the perpetrator's influence for years to come. Possible future uses could include attacks on hard targets like the CIA and NSA, or using blackmail to recruit spies. Cyberconflict professor Thomas Rid said the stolen data would have myriad uses. He added that the amount of data taken was likely to be many times greater than during Moonlight Maze, and if printed would form a stack far taller than the Washington Monument.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Impact
Even where data was not exfiltrated, the impact was significant. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) advised that affected devices be rebuilt from trusted sources, and that all credentials exposed to SolarWinds software should be considered compromised and should therefore be reset. Anti -malware companies additionally advised searching log files for specific indicators of compromise.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Impact
However, it appeared that the attackers had deleted or altered records, and may have modified network or system settings in ways that could require manual review. Former Homeland Security Advisor Thomas P. Bossert warned that it could take years to evict the attackers from US networks, leaving them able to continue to monitor, destroy or tamper with data in the meantime. Harvard's Bruce Schneier, and NYU's Pano Yannakogeorgos, founding dean of the Air Force Cyber College, said that affected networks may need to be replaced completely.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Impact
The Justice Department disclosed in July 2021 that 27 of its federal prosecutors' offices around the country had been affected, including 80% of Microsoft email accounts breached in four New York offices. Two of the offices, in Manhattan and Brooklyn, handle many prominent investigations of white-collar crime, as well as of people close to former president Trump.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Technology companies and business
On December 8, 2020, before other organizations were known to have been breached, FireEye published countermeasures against the red team tools that had been stolen from FireEye.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Technology companies and business
On December 15, 2020, Microsoft announced that SUNBURST, which only affects Windows platforms, had been added to Microsoft's malware database and would, from December 16 onwards, be detected and quarantined by Microsoft Defender.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Technology companies and business
GoDaddy handed ownership to Microsoft of a command-and-control domain used in the attack, allowing Microsoft to activate a killswitch in the SUNBURST malware, and to discover which SolarWinds customers were infected.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Technology companies and business
On December 14, 2020, the CEOs of several American utility companies convened to discuss the risks posed to the power grid by the attacks. On December 22, 2020, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation asked electricity companies to report their level of exposure to Solarwinds software.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Technology companies and business
SolarWinds unpublished its featured customer list after the hack, although as of December 15, cybersecurity firm GreyNoise Intelligence said SolarWinds had not removed the infected software updates from its distribution server.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Technology companies and business
Around January 5, 2021, SolarWinds investors filed a class action lawsuit against the company in relation to its security failures and subsequent fall in share price. Soon after, SolarWinds hired a new cybersecurity firm co-founded by Krebs.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Technology companies and business
The Linux Foundation pointed out that if Orion had been open source, users would have been able to audit it, including via reproducible builds, making it much more likely that the malware payload would have been spotted.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, U.S. government
On December 18, 2020, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that some details of the event would likely be classified so as not to become public.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, U.S. government, Security agencies
On December 12, 2020, a National Security Council (NSC) meeting was held at the White House to discuss the breach of federal organizations. On December 13, 2020, CISA issued an emergency directive asking federal agencies to disable the SolarWinds software, to reduce the risk of additional intrusions, even though doing so would reduce those agencies' ability to monitor their computer networks. The Russian government said that it was not involved in the attacks.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, U.S. government, Security agencies
On December 14, 2020, the Department of Commerce confirmed that it had asked the CISA and the FBI to investigate. The NSC activated Presidential Policy Directive 41, an Obama-era emergency plan, and convened its Cyber Response Group. The U.S. Cyber Command threatened swift retaliation against the attackers, pending the outcome of investigations.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, U.S. government, Security agencies
The DOE helped to compensate for a staffing shortfall at CISA by allocating resources to help the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recover from the cyberattack. The FBI, CISA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) formed a Cyber Unified Coordination Group (UCG) to coordinate their efforts.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, U.S. government, Security agencies
On December 24, 2020, CISA said state and local government networks, in addition to federal ones, and other organizations, had been impacted by the attack, but did not provide further details.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, U.S. government, Congress
The Senate Armed Services Committee's cybersecurity subcommittee was briefed by Defense Department officials. The House Committee on Homeland Security and House Committee on Oversight and Reform announced an investigation. Marco Rubio, acting chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the U.S. must retaliate, but only once the perpetrator is certain. The committee's vice-chairman, Mark Warner, criticized President Trump for failing to acknowledge or react to the hack.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, U.S. government, Congress
Senator Ron Wyden called for mandatory security reviews of software used by federal agencies.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, U.S. government, Congress
On December 22, 2020, after U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters that he was "completely on top of this", the Senate Finance Committee was briefed by Microsoft that dozens of Treasury email accounts had been breached, and the attackers had accessed systems of the Treasury's Departmental Offices division, home to top Treasury officials. Senator Wyden said that the briefing showed that the Treasury "still does not know all of the actions taken by hackers, or precisely what information was stolen".


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, U.S. government, Congress
On December 23, 2020, Senator Bob Menendez asked the State Department to end its silence about the extent of its breach, and Senator Richard Blumenthal asked the same of the Veterans Administration.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, U.S. government, The judiciary
The Administrative Office of the United States Courts initiated an audit, with DHS, of the U.S. Judiciary's Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system. It stopped accepting highly sensitive court documents to the CM/ECF, requiring those instead to be accepted only in paper form or on airgapped devices.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, U.S. government, President Trump
President Donald Trump made no comment on the hack for days after it was reported, leading Senator Mitt Romney to decry his "silence and inaction". On December 19, Trump publicly addressed the attacks for the first time; he downplayed the hack, contended that the media had overblown the severity of the incident, said that "everything is well under control"; and proposed, without evidence, that China, rather than Russia, might be responsible for the attack. Trump then pivoted to insisting that he had won the 2020 presidential election.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, U.S. government, President Trump
He speculated, without evidence, that the attack might also have involved a "hit" on voting machines, part of a long-running campaign by Trump to falsely assert that he won the 2020 election. Trump's claim was rebutted by former CISA director Chris Krebs, who pointed out that Trump's claim was not possible. Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, described Trump's statements as dishonest, calling the comment a "scandalous betrayal of our national security" that "sounds like it could have been written in the Kremlin."


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, U.S. government, President Trump
Former Homeland Security Advisor Thomas P. Bossert said, "President Trump is on the verge of leaving behind a federal government, and perhaps a large number of major industries, compromised by the Russian government," and noted that congressional action, including via the National Defense Authorization Act would be required to mitigate the damage caused by the attacks.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, U.S. government, President Biden
Then president-elect Joe Biden said he would identify and penalize the attackers. Biden's incoming chief of staff, Ron Klain, said the Biden administration's response to the hack would extend beyond sanctions. On December 22, 2020, Biden reported that his transition team was still being denied access to some briefings about the attack by Trump administration officials.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, U.S. government, President Biden
In January 2021, Biden named appointees for two relevant White House positions: Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall as homeland security adviser, and Anne Neuberger as deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, U.S. government, President Biden
In March 2021, the Biden administration expressed growing concerns over the hack, and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called it “an active threat”. Meanwhile The New York Times reported that the US government was planning economic sanctions as well as "a series of clandestine actions across Russian networks" in retaliation.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, U.S. government, President Biden
On April 15, 2021, the United States expelled 10 Russian diplomats and issued sanctions against 6 Russian companies that support its cyber operations, as well as 32 individuals and entities for their role in the hack and in Russian interference in the 2020 United States elections.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Rest of the world
NATO said that it was "currently assessing the situation, with a view to identifying and mitigating any potential risks to our networks." On December 18, the United Kingdom National Cyber Security Centre said that it was still establishing the attacks' impact on the UK. The UK and Irish cybersecurity agencies published alerts targeting SolarWinds customers.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Rest of the world
On December 23, 2020, the UK Information Commissioner's Office – a national privacy authority – told UK organizations to check immediately whether they were impacted.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Rest of the world
On December 24, 2020, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security asked SolarWinds Orion users in Canada to check for system compromises.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Cyber espionage or cyberattack?
The attack prompted a debate on whether the hack should be treated as cyber espionage, or as a cyberattack constituting an act of war. Most current and former U.S. officials considered the 2020 Russian hack to be a "stunning and distressing feat of espionage" but not a cyberattack because the Russians did not appear to destroy or manipulate data or cause physical damage (for example, to the electrical grid).


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Cyber espionage or cyberattack?
Erica Borghard of the Atlantic Council and Columbia's Saltzman Institute and Jacquelyn Schneider of the Hoover Institution and Naval War College argued that the breach was an act of espionage that could be responded to with "arrests, diplomacy, or counterintelligence" and had not yet been shown to be a cyberattack, a classification that would legally allow the U.S. to respond with force.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Cyber espionage or cyberattack?
Law professor Jack Goldsmith wrote that the hack was a damaging act of cyber-espionage but "does not violate international law or norms" and wrote that "because of its own practices, the U.S. government has traditionally accepted the legitimacy of foreign governmental electronic spying in U.S. government networks." Law professor Michael Schmitt concurred, citing the Tallinn Manual.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Cyber espionage or cyberattack?
By contrast, Microsoft president Brad Smith termed the hack a cyberattack, stating that it was "not 'espionage as usual,' even in the digital age" because it was "not just an attack on specific targets, but on the trust and reliability of the world's critical infrastructure." U.S. Senator Richard J. Durbin (D-IL) described the attack as tantamount to a declaration of war.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Debate on possible U.S. responses
Writing for Wired, Borghard and Schneider opined that the U.S. "should continue to build and rely on strategic deterrence to convince states not to weaponize the cyber intelligence they collect". They also stated that because deterrence may not effectively discourage cyber-espionage attempts by threat actors, the U.S. should also focus on making cyber-espionage less successful through methods such as enhanced cyber-defenses, better information-sharing, and "defending forward" (reducing Russian and Chinese offensive cyber-capabilities).


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Debate on possible U.S. responses
Writing for The Dispatch, Goldsmith wrote that the failure of defense and deterrence strategies against cyber-intrusion should prompt consideration of a "mutual restraint" strategy, "whereby the United States agrees to curb certain activities in foreign networks in exchange for forbearance by our adversaries in our networks."


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Debate on possible U.S. responses
Cybersecurity author Bruce Schneier advocated against retaliation or increases in offensive capabilities, proposing instead the adoption of a defense-dominant strategy and ratification of the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace or the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace.


2020 United States federal government data breach, Investigations and responses, Debate on possible U.S. responses
In the New York Times, Paul Kolbe, former CIA agent and director of the Intelligence Project at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, echoed Schneier's call for improvements in the U.S.'s cyberdefenses and international agreements. He also noted that the US is engaged in similar operations against other countries in what he described as an ambient cyber-conflict.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections
The 2020 United States gubernatorial elections were held on November 3, 2020, in 11 states and two territories. The previous gubernatorial elections for this group of states took place in 2016, except in New Hampshire and Vermont where governors only serve two-year terms and elected their current governors in 2018. Nine state governors ran for reelection and all nine won, while Democrat Steve Bullock of Montana could not run again due to term limits and Republican Gary Herbert of Utah decided to retire at the end of his term.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections
In addition to state gubernatorial elections, the territories of American Samoa and Puerto Rico also held elections for their governors. Puerto Rican governor Wanda Vázquez Garced lost the New Progressive primary to Pedro Pierluisi, while Lolo Matalasi Moliga of American Samoa could not run again due to term limits.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections
The elections took place concurrently with the 2020 presidential election, elections to the House of Representatives and Senate, and numerous state and local elections. This round of gubernatorial elections marked the first time since West Virginia Governor Jim Justice's party switch in mid-2017 that Republicans flipped any governorships held previously by Democrats, and the first round of gubernatorial elections since 2016 where Republicans made net gains, ending a streak of Democratic net gains that had occurred in prior elections during the presidency of Republican Donald Trump.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Election predictions
Several sites and individuals published predictions of competitive seats. These predictions looked at factors such as the strength of the incumbent (if the incumbent is running for re-election), the strength of the candidates, and the partisan leanings of the state (reflected in part by the state's Cook Partisan Voting Index rating). The predictions assigned ratings to each seat, with the rating indicating the predicted advantage that a party has in winning that seat.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Election predictions
Montana was considered the most competitive race in this cycle and was rated a tossup by four of six major pundits. Incumbent Democratic governor Steve Bullock was term-limited, but his lieutenant governor, Mike Cooney, a longtime political figure in the state since 1977, was the Democratic nominee. The Republican nominee was Montana at-large congressman Greg Gianforte, who is a controversial figure because he was arrested for body-slamming a reporter the day of a 2017 special election. Gianforte also isn't from Montana.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Election predictions
The Bullock administration had an approval rating of 52% and a disapproval of 31%, according to a poll by the Morning Consult, meaning Cooney's election chances were higher in the otherwise solidly Republican state. North Carolina was the next most competitive race, as it is a Republican-leaning swing state with a Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, meaning that Cooper faced a tough reelection. Cooper won his 2016 election by a mere 10,277 votes, or 0.22%. However, most forecasters gave the race a Democratic lean as Cooper had an approval rating of 59%. Cooper had also lead most polls against his Republican challenger, Dan Forest, by an average of a 11-point lead, according to RealClearPolitics.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Election predictions
Vermont and New Hampshire are both races that could have become competitive as they are Democratic states with Republican governors in a presidential year. However, Republican incumbents Phil Scott of Vermont and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire are ranked among the most popular governors in the United States, and both races were rated likely to be safe Republican. Both are viewed as centrists who attract Democratic and independent voters. Scott's challenger was David Zuckerman, the state's lieutenant governor, who ran on both the Democratic and Progressive nominations. Zuckerman had been endorsed by Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. Sununu was running against New Hampshire Senate Majority Leader Dan Feltes.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Election predictions
In Missouri, Republican incumbent Mike Parson assumed office after the resignation of Eric Greitens due to sexual harassment and violations of campaign finance laws, and his lack of name recognition and unpopularity could have made his race against state auditor Nicole Galloway, Missouri's only Democratic statewide office holder, competitive, though most forecasters still rated the race as lean Republican due to Missouri's heavy Republican lean.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Election predictions
West Virginia’s gubernatorial race was seen as safe for Republicans because the state heavily leans Republican, but some forecasts rated it as likely Republican due to corruption allegations against incumbent Jim Justice that have led to rising unpopularity. Justice faced centrist Democrat Ben Salango, who was endorsed by U.S. Senator Joe Manchin and multiple local unions.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Election predictions
The gubernatorial races for John Carney in Delaware and Jay Inslee in Washington were seen as safe for Democrats, while the races for Eric Holcomb in Indiana, Doug Burgum in North Dakota, and Spencer Cox in Utah were seen as safe for Republicans.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Statistics, Closest races
States where the margin of victory was between 1% and 5%:


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Statistics, Closest races
Red denotes races won by Republicans. Blue denotes races won by Democrats. Dark blue denotes race won by New Progressives.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Statistics, Partisan control of states
All of the states that held gubernatorial elections in 2020 also held state legislative elections in 2020, although some legislative seats were not up for election in states that stagger legislative elections.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Election dates
These were the election dates for the regularly scheduled general elections.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Delaware
One-term incumbent Democrat John Carney ran for re-election to a second term. Primaries took place on September 15. Carney decisively defeated progressive community activist and environmentalist David Lamar Williams, Jr. in the Democratic primary. Multiple candidates ran in the Republican primary, including attorney Julianne Murray, Delaware State Senator from the 16th district Colin Bonini, small business owner David Bosco, local Republican politician David Graham, Delaware State Senator from the 21st district Bryant Richardson, and perennial candidate Scott Walker. Murray narrowly defeated Bonini with a plurality of the vote. Carney won reelection by a large margin.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Indiana
One-term incumbent Republican Eric Holcomb ran for re-election in 2020 alongside his running mate Suzanne Crouch. Holcomb ran against the Democratic nominee, former Health Commissioner of Indiana Woody Myers, and his running mate Linda Lawson, the former Minority Leader of the Indiana House of Representatives. Donald Rainwater, a U.S. Navy veteran, was the Libertarian nominee. Primaries were held on June 2, although both Holcomb and Myers ran uncontested.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Indiana
Holcomb won the election in a landslide, though Libertarian Donald Rainwater's 11% of the vote was the highest percentage of vote for a third party candidate in any of the 2020 gubernatorial race, and the highest any Libertarian candidate ever received in Indiana in a three-party race (The 2006 United States Senate election in Indiana saw the Libertarian candidate take 12.6% of the vote, but there was no Democratic candidate running).


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Missouri
One-term incumbent Republican Mike Parson took office upon Eric Greitens' resignation due to threatening the dissemination of sexual images and campaign finance violations. Parson ran for election to a full term in 2020 and easily won the Republican primary. State auditor Nicole Galloway, Missouri's only Democratic statewide office holder, won the Democratic primary, defeating pastor Eric Morrison, and multiple other candidates including Jimmie Matthews, Antoin Johnson, and Robin Quaethem. Primaries took place on August 4. The Libertarian nominee was U.S. Air Force veteran Rik Combs, while Jerome Bauer was the Green Party nominee. Both candidates ran uncontested in their respective primaries. Despite predictions that this election could be close and that Parson could underperform national Republicans in the state, Parson won handily.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Montana
Two-term incumbent Democrat Steve Bullock was term-limited in 2020, making him the only incumbent governor in the United States (not counting U.S. territories) who was term-limited in this election year. This was therefore an open-seat election, and viewed as the most competitive gubernatorial election in the 2020 cycle. Primaries were held on June 2, with heavy competition in both. Bullock's lieutenant governor, Mike Cooney, a longtime local politician, was the Democratic nominee, defeating businesswoman and daughter of former U.S. representative Pat Williams, Whitney Williams, in the Democratic primary.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Montana
Cooney's running mate was Minority Leader of the Montana House of Representatives, Casey Schreiner. The Republican nominee was Montana's at-large congressman Greg Gianforte, who defeated Attorney General Tim Fox and State Senator from the 6th district, Albert Olszewski. Gianforte's running mate was Kristen Juras, a businesswoman and attorney. Gianforte was a controversial figure in the state, as he was arrested for body slamming a reporter the day of a 2017 special election. Despite predictions that this election would be close, Gianforte won by 12 points, making this the first time Montana has voted for a Republican for governor since 2000. This was the only gubernatorial seat to change parties in 2020.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, New Hampshire
New Hampshire is one of two states, alongside Vermont, that has two-year terms for their governors instead of four-year terms, meaning they held their gubernatorial latest elections in 2018. In December 2019, two-term incumbent Republican Chris Sununu announced that he would run for a third two-year term in 2020, ending speculation he would choose to run for the U.S. Senate instead. Sununu easily defeated Franklin city counselor Karen Testerman in the Republican primary.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, New Hampshire
In a hotly contested Democratic primary, Majority Leader of the New Hampshire Senate Dan Feltes narrowly defeated Andru Volinsky, a member of the Executive Council of New Hampshire from the 2nd district. The primaries took place on September 8. Despite national Democrats winning by large margins in the state's presidential, senate, and house races, Sununu won by a large margin based on his popularity with voters of both parties.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, North Carolina
One-term incumbent Democrat Roy Cooper, who won his 2016 election by an extremely slim margin of only 10,281 votes, ran for re-election in 2020. Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest was the Republican nominee. Primaries were held on March 3, where Cooper defeated retired U.S. Army captain and perennial candidate Ernest T. Reeves in a landslide in the Democratic primary, and Forest decisively defeated the North Carolina State Representative from the 20th district, Holly Grange, in the Republican primary. Cooper won reelection as pundits predicted, though the margin was close. Cooper outperformed national Democrats in the state, who narrowly lost both the Presidential and Senate races.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, North Dakota
One-term incumbent Republican Doug Burgum ran for re-election in 2020. Brent Sanford, the incumbent lieutenant governor, remained his running mate. The Democratic nominee was veterinarian and former Killdeer school board member Shelly Lenz, whose running mate was Ben Vig, a former member of the North Dakota House of Representatives from the 23rd district. Primaries were held on June 9, with Burgum winning by a landslide margin over U.S. Air Force veteran Michael Coachman and Lenz running uncontested. Burgum won reelection in a landslide.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Utah
Two and a half-term incumbent Republican Gary Herbert was eligible for re-election in 2020, as Utah does not have gubernatorial term limits. However, he announced shortly after being re-elected in 2016 that he would not run for a third full term. Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox defeated multiple other high-profile Republicans in the competitive Republican primary on June 30 including former governor Jon Hunstman, Jr., Speaker of the Utah House of Representatives Greg Hughes, and former Chairman of the Utah Republican Party Thomas Wright. Cox's running mate for Lieutenant Governor was Utah Senator from the 7th district, Deidre Henderson.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Utah
Meanwhile, University of Utah law professor Christopher Peterson won an overwhelming majority of delegates at the Utah Democratic Convention, immediately awarding him with the Democratic nomination alongside his running mate, community organizer Karina Brown. During the general election campaign, an advertisement featuring Cox and Peterson together calling for unity went viral. Cox won in a landslide, outperforming national Republicans in the state.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Vermont
Two-term incumbent Republican Phil Scott confirmed he was seeking a third term in 2020. However, he did not campaign due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the handling of which awarded Scott with a 75% approval rating in the summer. Scott was re-elected with 55% of the vote in 2018. Scott is a heavy critic of President Donald Trump, who holds a net negative 39% disapproval rating in the Green Mountain State. He is one of the last remaining liberal Republican politicians with center-left political leanings, and remains an outlier in the otherwise staunchly Democratic state.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Vermont
Primary elections were held on August 11. Scott defeated multiple challengers in the Republican primary, the most prominent of which was lawyer and pastor John Klar. Lieutenant Governor David Zuckerman defeated former education secretary Rebecca Holcombe in the Democratic primary. He also defeated Cris Ericson and Boots Wardinski in the Vermont Progressive Party primary, despite only being recognized as a write-in candidate. Zuckerman was endorsed by U.S. Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders, the most popular senator amongst his constituents in the country.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Vermont
Zuckerman chose to run under the Progressive Party ballot line in the general election, listing the Democratic Party as a secondary nomination, utilizing Vermont's electoral fusion system. Despite Vermont being one of the most heavily Democratic states in the nation with a partisan voting index of D+15, Scott won reelection in a landslide because of his widespread popularity and focus on local issues. Scott has also been praised for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Zuckerman had also made past comments perceived as being anti-vaccination.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Washington
Two-term incumbent Democrat Jay Inslee was eligible to run for re-election in 2020, as Washington does not have gubernatorial term limits. Inslee ran for re-election to a third term after dropping out of the Democratic presidential primaries on August 21, 2019. He faced police chief of the city of Republic, Washington, Loren Culp. A top-two, jungle primary took place on August 4, meaning that all candidates appeared on the same ballot regardless of party affiliation and the top two (Inslee and Culp) advanced to the general election in November.


2020 United States gubernatorial elections, Washington
Washington is one of two states in the country, alongside California and Louisiana (and Nebraska for statewide offices), that holds jungle primaries rather than conventional ones. Inslee won both the primary and general elections in a landslide, becoming the first governor of Washington in decades to be elected to a third term. Culp refused to concede, citing false claims of election fraud.