2020 United States presidential election, General election campaigns, Issues unique to the election, Federal Election Commission issues
The Federal Election Commission, which was created in 1974 to enforce campaign finance laws in federal elections, has not functioned since July 2020 due to vacancies in membership. In the absence of a quorum, the commission cannot vote on complaints or give guidance through advisory opinions. As of May 19, 2020, there were 350 outstanding matters on the agency's enforcement docket and 227 items waiting for action. As of September 1, 2020, Trump had not nominated anyone to fill the FEC vacancies.


2020 United States presidential election, General election campaigns, Issues unique to the election, Supreme Court vacancy
On September 18, 2020, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately said the precedent he had set regarding the Merrick Garland nomination was inoperative and that a replacement would be voted on as soon as possible, setting the stage for a confirmation battle and an unexpected intrusion into the campaign. The death of Justice Ginsburg resulted in large increases in momentum for both the Democrats and Republicans. The president, vice president, and several Republican members of Congress said a full Supreme Court bench was needed to decide the upcoming election.


2020 United States presidential election, General election campaigns, Issues unique to the election, Supreme Court vacancy
On September 26, the day after Justice Ginsburg's body lay in state at the Capitol, Trump held a Rose Garden ceremony at the White House to announce and introduce his candidate, Amy Coney Barrett. After four days of confirmation hearings, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted the nomination out of committee on October 22, and on October 26, Barrett was confirmed on a party-line vote of 52–48, with no Democrats voting for her confirmation.


2020 United States presidential election, General election campaigns, Issues unique to the election, Supreme Court vacancy
This was the closest Supreme Court confirmation ever to a presidential election, and the first Supreme Court nomination since 1869 with no supporting votes from the minority party. It was also one of the fastest timelines from nomination to confirmations in U.S. history. According to a Fox News poll, a current issue for voters is the protection of the Supreme Court ruling of Roe v. Wade, on the legality of abortion.


2020 United States presidential election, General election campaigns, Issues unique to the election, Pre-election litigation
By September 2020, several hundred legal cases relating to the election had been filed. About 250 of these had to do with the mechanics of voting in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Supreme Court ruled on a number of these cases, primarily issuing emergency stays instead of going through the normal process due to the urgency. In October 2020, there was speculation that the election might be decided through a Supreme Court case, as happened following the 2000 election.


2020 United States presidential election, General election campaigns, Debates
On October 11, 2019, the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) announced that three general election debates would be held in the fall of 2020.


2020 United States presidential election, General election campaigns, Debates
The first, moderated by Chris Wallace took place on September 29, and was co-hosted by Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. The debate was originally to be hosted at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana, but the university decided against holding the debate as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Biden was generally held to have won the first debate, with a significant minority of commentators calling it a draw.


2020 United States presidential election, General election campaigns, Debates
One exchange that was particularly noted was when Trump did not directly denounce the white supremacist and neo-fascist group Proud Boys, which explicitly engages in political violence, instead responding that they should "stand back and stand by". On the next day, Trump told reporters the group should "stand down" while also claiming that he was not aware of what the group was. The debate was described as "chaotic and nearly incoherent" because of Trump's repeated interruptions, causing the CPD to consider adjustments to the format of the remaining debates.


2020 United States presidential election, General election campaigns, Debates
The vice presidential debate was held on October 7, 2020, at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. The debate was widely held to be subdued, with no clear victor. One incident that was particularly commented on was when a fly landed on vice-president Pence's head, and remained there unbeknownst to him for two minutes.


2020 United States presidential election, General election campaigns, Debates
The second debate was initially set to be held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but the university withdrew in June 2020, over concerns regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. The planned debate was rescheduled for October 15 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, but due to Trump contracting COVID-19 the CPD announced on October 8 that the debate would be held virtually, in which the candidates would appear from separate locations. However, Trump refused to participate in a virtual debate, and the commission subsequently announced that the debate had been cancelled.


2020 United States presidential election, General election campaigns, Debates
The third scheduled debate took place on October 22 at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, and was moderated by Kristen Welker. The changes to the debate rules resulted in it being generally considered more civil than the first debate. Welker's performance as moderator was praised, with her being regarded as having done a good job preventing the candidates from interrupting each other. Biden was generally held to have won the debate, though it was considered unlikely to alter the race to any considerable degree.


2020 United States presidential election, General election campaigns, Debates
The Free & Equal Elections Foundation held two debates with various third party and independent candidates, one on October 8, 2020, in Denver, Colorado, and another on October 24, 2020, in Cheyenne, Wyoming.


2020 United States presidential election, General election campaigns, Polling, Two-way
The following graph depicts the standing of each candidate in the poll aggregators from September 2019 to November 2020. Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, had an average polling lead of 7.9 percentage points over incumbent President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee.


2020 United States presidential election, General election campaigns, Polling, Four-way
Calculated averages are not comparable to those for the Biden vs. Trump polls. As polling with third parties has been very limited, the polls included in the average are often different.


2020 United States presidential election, General election campaigns, Polling, Swing states
The following graph depicts the difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in each swing state in the poll aggregators from March 2020 to the election, with the election results for comparison.


2020 United States presidential election, General election campaigns, The total cost of the election
The Center for Responsive Politics estimated the total cost of the 2020 election nearly $14 billion, making it the most expensive election in history and twice as expensive as the previous presidential election cycle.


2020 United States presidential election, Campaign issues, COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic was a major issue of the campaign, with Trump's responses being heavily criticized. The president spread mixed messages on the value of wearing face masks as protection, including criticizing Biden and reporters for wearing them, but has also encouraged their use at times. During the campaign, Trump held many events across the country, including in COVID-19 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 presidential election, Campaign issues, COVID-19 pandemic
Biden advocated for expansion of federal funding, including funding under the Defense Production Act for testing, personal protective equipment, and research. Trump has also invoked the Defense Production Act to a lesser extent to control the distribution of masks and ventillators, but his response plan relied significantly on a vaccine being released by the end of 2020. At the second presidential debate, Trump claimed Biden had called him xenophobic for restricting entry from foreign nationals who had visited China, but Biden responded that he had not been referring to this decision.


2020 United States presidential election, Campaign issues, Economy
Trump claimed credit for the consistent economic expansion of his presidency's first three years, with the stock market at its longest growth period in history, and unemployment at a fifty-year low. Additionally, he has touted the 2020 third quarter rebound, in which GDP grew at an annualized rate of 33.1%, as evidence of the success of his economic policies. Biden responded to Trump's claims by repeating that the strong economy under Trump's presidency was inherited from the Obama administration, and that Trump has aggravated the economic impact of the pandemic, including the need for 42 million Americans to file for unemployment.


2020 United States presidential election, Campaign issues, Economy
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which lowered income tax for most Americans, as well as lowering the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, were an important part of Trump's economic policy. Biden and the Democrats generally describe these cuts as unfairly benefiting the upper class. Biden plans to raise taxes on corporations and those making over $400,000 per year, while keeping the reduced taxes on lower-income brackets, and raise capital gains taxes to a maximum bracket of 39.6%. In response, Trump said Biden's plans will destroy retirement accounts and the stock market.


2020 United States presidential election, Campaign issues, Environment
Trump and Biden's views on environmental policy differ significantly. Trump has stated at times that climate change is a hoax, although he has also called it a serious subject. Trump has condemned the Paris Agreement on greenhouse gas reduction and began the withdrawal process. Biden plans to rejoin it and announced a $2 trillion plan to combat climate change. However, Biden has not fully accepted the Green New Deal. Biden does not plan to ban fracking, but rather to outlaw new fracking on federal land. However, in a debate, Trump claimed Biden wanted to ban it altogether. Trump's other environmental policies have included the removal of methane emission standards, and an expansion of mining.


2020 United States presidential election, Campaign issues, Health care
Health care was a divisive issue in both the Democratic primary campaign and the general campaign. While Biden, as well as other candidates, promised protection of the Affordable Care Act, progressives within the Democratic Party advocated to replace the private insurance industry with Medicare for All. Biden's plan involves adding a public option to the American healthcare system, and the restoration of the individual mandate to buy health care which was removed from the Affordable Care Act by the 2017 tax cut bill as well as restoring funding for Planned Parenthood.


2020 United States presidential election, Campaign issues, Health care
Trump announced plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act, calling it "too expensive", but has not said what would replace it. At the time of the election, the Trump administration and Republican officials from 18 states had a lawsuit before the Supreme Court, asking the court to repeal the Affordable Care Act.


2020 United States presidential election, Campaign issues, Racial unrest
As a result of the murder of George Floyd and other incidents of police brutality against African Americans, combined with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, a series of protests and a wider period of racial unrest erupted in mid-2020. This followed with the Black Lives Matter movement, which protested police brutality against black people, and became a central point of the 2020 presidential campaign. Although a majority of the protests were peaceful, widespread riots and looting also occurred.


2020 United States presidential election, Campaign issues, Racial unrest
As a result of these protests, Trump and the Republicans suggested sending in the military to counter the protests, which was criticized, especially by Democrats, as heavy-handed and potentially illegal. Trump referred to Black Lives Matter protesters confronting diners in a restaurant as "thugs", and called the movement a "symbol of hate". Particularly controversial was a photo-op Trump took in front of St. John's Church in Washington D.C., before which military police had forcefully cleared peaceful protestors from the area.


2020 United States presidential election, Campaign issues, Racial unrest
Biden condemned Trump for his actions against protestors; he described George Floyd's words "I can't breathe" as a "wake-up call for our nation". He also promised he would create a police oversight commission in his first 100 days as president, and establish a uniform use of force standard, as well as other police reform measures.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Statistics
More than 158 million votes were cast in the election. More than 100 million of them were cast before Election Day by early voting or mail ballot, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The election saw the highest voter turnout as a percentage of eligible voters since 1900, with each of the two main tickets receiving more than 74 million votes, surpassing Barack Obama's record of 69.5 million votes from 2008. The Biden–Harris ticket received more than 81 million votes, the most votes ever in a U.S. presidential election.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Statistics
It was the ninth consecutive presidential election where the victorious major party nominee did not win a popular vote majority by a double-digit margin over the losing major party nominee(s), continuing the longest sequence of such presidential elections in U.S. history that began in 1988 and in 2016 eclipsed the previous longest sequences from 1836 through 1860 and from 1876 through 1900. In 2020, 58 percent of U.S. voters lived in landslide counties, a decline from 61 percent in 2016.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Statistics
Trump became the first U.S. president since 1992 and the eleventh incumbent in the country's history to lose a bid for a second term, and Biden's 51.3% of the popular vote was the largest for a challenger to an incumbent president since 1932. Biden became the second former vice president, after Republican Richard Nixon in 1968, to be elected president without having succeeded to the office.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Statistics
Biden won 25 states, the District of Columbia, and one congressional district in Nebraska, totaling 306 electoral votes. Trump won 25 states and one congressional district in Maine, totaling 232 electoral votes. This result was the exact reverse of Trump's 2016 306-to-232 victory  (excluding faithless electors), marking the first ever occurrence of back-to-back elections with the same electoral vote distribution between candidates.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Statistics
Biden became the first Democrat to win the presidential election in Georgia since 1992 and in Arizona since 1996, and the first candidate to win nationally without Ohio since 1960 and without Florida since 1992, effectively puncturing the former's bellwether status. Biden flipped five states won by Trump in 2016: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as Nebraska's 2nd congressional district. Trump did not flip any states won by Clinton in 2016. Biden's three gains in the rust belt — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — are characterized as the rebuilding of the blue wall states consistently won by Democrats since 1992 that was punctured by Trump in 2016.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Statistics
In light of the attempts to contest the election results, an important question is how many votes would need to be changed to change the overall result. If the three closest states (Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona) had gone for Trump, there would have been a tie of 269 electors for each candidate, causing a contingent election and throwing it to the House of Representatives, where Trump had the advantage.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Statistics
Biden's popular vote margin in those three states totaled around 43,000; this is only 0.03% of the total votes cast nationally, but it would entail changing the margins in each of these states by 0.63% or less. A similar situation occurred in 2016, when a shift of 0.77% or less in the three closest states (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania) would have resulted in popular vote winner Hillary Clinton defeating Trump in the Electoral College.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Statistics
Almost all counties previously considered reliable indicators of eventual success in presidential elections voted for Trump instead of Biden, meaning that they did not continue their streaks as bellwether counties. This was attributed to increasing political polarization throughout the country, as well as the urban-rural divide.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Statistics
While Trump still dominated rural America, this was not universally true. Biden won 50.5% of rural counties with majorities of non-white voters, particularly in the South and West. Rural counties in the South won by Biden had higher levels of economic distress than those won by Trump, but in the Northeast, the exact inverse was true. In the West, Biden did especially well in rural counties that had high shares of workers employed in the leisure and hospitality sector. Such counties likewise had large constituencies of in-migration from other states.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Statistics
Every state won by Biden was won by more votes than Hillary Clinton won each state. The combined vote margin of these states was equal to Biden's gain over Hillary Clinton.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Election calls
Major news organizations project a state for a candidate when there is high mathematical confidence that the outstanding vote would be unlikely to prevent the projected winner from ultimately winning the state. Election projections are made by decision teams of political scientists and data scientists.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Election calls
On November 6, election-calling organization Decision Desk HQ projected that Biden had won the election after forecasting that Biden had won Pennsylvania. According to Decision Desk HQ (which had not yet called Arizona), Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes gave Biden a total of 273 electoral votes, three over the threshold to make him president-elect. Decision Desk HQ's clients Vox and Business Insider also called the race at that time.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Election calls
On the morning of November 7 at approximately 11:30 a.m. EST, roughly three and a half days after polls had closed, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, the Associated Press, CNN, and Fox News all called the election for Biden, based on projections of votes in Pennsylvania showing him leading outside of the recount threshold (0.5% in that state). That evening, Biden and Harris gave victory speeches in Wilmington, Delaware.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, OSCE election monitoring
On the invitation of the U.S. State Department, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), which has been monitoring U.S. elections since 2002 (as it does for major elections in all other OSCE member countries), sent 102 observers from 39 countries.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, OSCE election monitoring
The task force consisted of long-term observers from the ODIHR office (led by former Polish diplomat Urszula Gacek) deployed to 28 states from September on and covering 15 states on election day, and a group of European lawmakers acting as short-term observers (led by German parliamentarian Michael Georg Link), reporting from Maryland, Virginia, California, Nevada, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, and D.C. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was scaled down to a "limited election observation mission" from the originally planned 100 long-term observers and 400 short-term observers.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, OSCE election monitoring
An interim report published by the OSCE shortly before the election noted that many ODIHR interlocutors "expressed grave concerns about the risk of legitimacy of the elections being questioned due to the incumbent President's repeated allegations of a fraudulent election process, and postal vote in particular". On the day after the election, the task force published preliminary findings, with part of the summary stating:


2020 United States presidential election, Results, OSCE election monitoring
The 3 November general elections were competitive and well managed despite legal uncertainties and logistical challenges. In a highly polarized political environment, acrimonious campaign rhetoric fuelled tensions. Measures intended to secure the elections during the pandemic triggered protracted litigation driven by partisan interests. The uncertainty caused by late legal challenges and evidence-deficient claims about election fraud created confusion and concern among election officials and voters. Voter registration and identification rules in some states are unduly restrictive for certain groups of citizens. The media, although sharply polarized, provided comprehensive coverage of the campaign and made efforts to provide accurate information on the organization of elections.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, OSCE election monitoring
Link said that "on the election day itself, we couldn't see any violations" at the polling places visited by the observers. The task force also found "nothing untoward" while observing the handling of mail-in ballots at post offices, with Gacek being quoted as saying: "We feel that allegations of systemic wrongdoing in these elections have no solid ground. The system has held up well." The OSCE's election monitoring branch is due to publish a more comprehensive report in early 2021.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Electoral results
Candidates are listed individually below if they received more than 0.1% of the popular vote. Popular vote totals are from the Federal Election Commission report.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Results by state
Note that two states (Maine and Nebraska) allow for their electoral votes to be split between candidates by congressional districts. The winner within each congressional district gets one electoral vote for the district. The winner of the statewide vote gets two additional electoral votes.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Close states
States where the margin of victory was under 1% (37 electoral votes; all won by Biden):


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Close states
States where the margin of victory was between 1% and 5% (86 electoral votes; 42 won by Biden, 44 by Trump):


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Close states
States/districts where the margin of victory was between 5% and 10% (80 electoral votes; 17 won by Biden, 63 by Trump):


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Close states
Blue denotes states or congressional districts won by Democrat Joe Biden; red denotes those won by Republican Donald Trump.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Maps
Results by state, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Maps
Results by county, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Maps
A discontinuous cartogram of the 2020 United States presidential election


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Exit polling
Voter demographic data for 2020 were collected by Edison Research for the National Election Pool, a consortium of ABC News, CBS News, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, and the Associated Press. The voter survey is based on exit polls completed by 15,590 voters in person as well as by phone.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Exit polling
The Brookings Institution released a report entitled "Exit polls show both familiar and new voting blocs sealed Biden's win" on November 12, 2020. In it, author William H. Frey attributes Obama's 2008 win to young people, people of color, and the college educated. Frey contends Trump won in 2016 thanks to older White without college degrees. Frey says the same coalitions largely held in 2008 and 2016, although in key battleground states Biden increased his vote among some of the 2016 Trump groups, particularly among White and older Americans.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Exit polling
Trump won the white vote in 2016 by 20% but in 2020 by only 16%. The Democratic Party won black voters by 75%, the lowest margin since 1980. Democrats won the Latino vote by 32%, which is the smallest margin since 2004, and they won the Asian American vote by 27%, the lowest figure since 2008. Biden reduced the Republican margin of white men without college educations from 48% to 42% and the Democrats made a slight improvement of 2% among white, college-educated women. People age 18 to 29 registered a rise in Democratic support between 2016 and 2020, with the Democratic margin of victory among that demographic increasing from 19% to 24%.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Exit polling
Post-election analysis using verified voter data found the Associated Press's Votecast was more accurate than the exit polls.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Exit polling, Voting patterns by ethnicity
Biden won 65% of the Latino vote according to Edison Research, and 63% according to the Associated Press. Voto Latino reported that the Latino vote was crucial to the Biden victory in Arizona. 40% of Latino voters who voted in 2020 did not vote in 2016, and 73% of those Latino voters voted for Biden (438,000 voters). Florida and Texas, which have large Latino populations were carried by Trump. In Florida, Trump won a majority of Cuban American voters in Miami-Dade County, Florida. However, the Latino vote was still crucial to enable Biden to carry states such as Nevada. Latino voters were targeted by a major Spanish-language disinformation campaign in the final weeks of the election, with various falsehoods and conspiracy theories being pushed out by WhatsApp and viral social media posts.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Exit polling, Voting patterns by ethnicity
Demographic patterns emerged having to do with country of origin and candidate preference. Pre- and post-election surveys showed Biden winning Latino of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Spanish heritage, while Trump carried Latinos of Cuban heritage. Data from Florida showed Biden holding a narrow edge among South Americans.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Exit polling, Voting patterns by ethnicity
Biden won 87% of the Black vote. This vote was crucial in the large cities of Pennsylvania and Michigan; the increase in the Democratic vote in Milwaukee County of about 28,000 votes was more than the 20,000-vote lead Biden had in the state of Wisconsin. Almost half Biden's gains in Georgia came from the four largest counties – Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, and Cobb – all in the Atlanta metro area with large Black populations. However, Trump also improved on his share of the black vote in 2016 by 4% and doubled the black vote Mitt Romney got in 2012.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Exit polling, Voting patterns by ethnicity
Polls showed that 68% of Asian American and Pacific Island (AAPI) voters supported Biden/Harris while 28% supported Trump/Pence. Karthick Ramakrishnan, a political science professor at the University of California Riverside and founder of AAPI Data, said Asian Americans supported Biden over Trump by about a 2:1 margin. Korean Americans, Japanese Americans, Indian Americans, and Chinese Americans favored Biden by higher margins overall compared to Vietnamese Americans and Filipino Americans. Many voters were turned off by Trump's language some of which was widely considered racist such as ("China virus" and "kung flu") but, according to Vox reporter Terry Nguyen, many Vietnamese voters (and especially elderly, South Vietnamese migrants who populated coastal centers in the 1970s) appreciated his strong anti-China stance.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Exit polling, Voting patterns by ethnicity
Data from FiveThirtyEight indicated 65% of Indian American voters backed Joe Biden, and 28% supported Donald Trump. Some Indian Americans self-identified with Kamala Harris, but others approved of Donald Trump's support of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In a speech given to 50,000 Indian-Americans during his 2019 visit to the US, Modi praised Trump with remarks that were interpreted as an indirect endorsement of his candidacy. Indian right-wing organizations like the Hindu Sena had performed special havans and pujas for Trump's electoral victory.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Exit polling, Voting patterns by ethnicity
During the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, a group of Trump supporters held an Indian flag quite prominently. It was held by a US citizen of Indian origin hailing from Kochi in Southern India. Varun Gandhi, a senior parliamentarian from India's ruling BJP, expressed surprise and disapproval of the prominent display of the Indian flag by some of the protestors in one of his tweets. However, opposition Indian National Congress leader Shashi Tharoor equated the mentality of some Indians with that of Trump supporters.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Exit polling, Voting patterns by ethnicity
Pre -election voter surveys by Indian Country Today found 68% of American Indian and Alaska Native voters supporting Democratic nominee Joe Biden. In particular, the Navajo Reservation, which spans a large quadrant of eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, delivered up to 97% of their votes per precinct to Biden, while overall support for Biden was between 60 and 90% on the Reservation. Biden also posted large turnout among Havasupai, Hopi, and Tohono O'odham peoples, delivering a large win in New Mexico and flipping Arizona.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Exit polling, Voting patterns by ethnicity
In Montana, while the state went for Trump overall, Biden won counties overlapping reservations of the Blackfeet, Fort Belknap, Crow and Northern Cheyenne. The same pattern held in South Dakota, with most of the counties overlapping the lands of the Standing Rock Sioux, Cheyenne River Sioux, Oglala Sioux, Rosebud Sioux and Crow Creek tribes going for Biden. For example, in Oglala Lakota County, which overlaps with the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Biden won 88% of the vote.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Exit polling, Voting patterns by ethnicity
Trump's strongest performance among Native tribes was with the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, where he won a strong majority in Robeson County and flipped Scotland County from blue to red. Trump had campaigned in Lumberton and promised the Lumbees federal recognition.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Polling accuracy
Although polls generally predicted the Biden victory, the national polls overestimated him by three to four points, and some state polling was even further from the actual result and greater than 2016's error (one or two points). The numbers represented the highest level of error since the 1980 presidential election. This polling overestimation also applied in several Senate races, where the Democrats underperformed by about five points relative to the polls, as well as the House elections, where Republicans gained seats instead of losing as polls predicted.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Polling accuracy
Most pollsters underestimated support for Trump in several key battleground states, including Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas and Wisconsin; a notable exception was Ann Selzer, who accurately predicted Republican victories in Iowa for the presidential and Senate races. The discrepancy between poll predictions and the actual result persisted from the 2016 election despite pollsters' attempts to fix problems with polling in 2016, in which they underestimated the Republican vote in several states. The imprecise polls led to changes in campaigning and fundraising decisions for both Democrats and Republicans.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Polling accuracy
According to The New York Times, polling misses have been attributed to, among other issues, reduced average response to polling; the relative difficulty to poll certain types of voters; and pandemic-related problems, such as a theory which suggests Democrats were less willing to vote in person on Election Day than Republicans for fear of contracting COVID-19. According to CNN, research presented to the American Association for Public Opinion Research indicated one of the primary problems was an inability by pollsters to include a certain segment of Trump supporters, either due to inaccessibility or lack of participation.


2020 United States presidential election, Results, Polling accuracy
New Statesman data journalist Ben Walker pointed to Hispanics as a historically difficult group to poll accurately, leading to pollsters underestimating the level of Trump support within the demographic group. Election analyst Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight wrote that the polling error was completely normal by historical standards and disputes the narrative that polls were wrong.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Election night
Election night, November 3, ended without a clear winner, as many state results were too close to call and millions of votes remained uncounted, including in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. Results were delayed in these states due to local rules on counting mail-in ballots. In a victory declared after midnight, Trump won the swing state of Florida by over three percentage points, an increase from his 1.2 percentage point margin in 2016, having seen significant gains in support among the Latino community in Miami-Dade County.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Election night
Shortly after 12:30 a.m. EST, Biden made a short speech in which he urged his supporters to be patient while the votes are counted, and said he believed he was "on track to win this election". Shortly before 2:30 a.m. EST, Trump made a speech to a roomful of supporters, falsely asserting that he had won the election and calling for a stop to all vote counting, saying that continued counting was "a fraud on the American people" and "we will be going to the U.S. Supreme Court." The Biden campaign denounced these attempts, claiming the Trump campaign was engaging in a "naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens".


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Late counting
In Pennsylvania, where the counting of mail-in ballots began on election night, Trump declared victory on November 4 with a lead of 675,000 votes, despite more than a million ballots remaining uncounted. Trump also declared victory in North Carolina and Georgia, despite many ballots being uncounted. At 11:20 p.m. EST on election night, Fox News projected Biden would win Arizona, with the Associated Press making the same call at 2:50 a.m. EST on November 4; however, several other media outlets concluded the state was too close to call.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Late counting
By the evening of November 4, the Associated Press reported that Biden had secured 264 electoral votes by winning Michigan and Wisconsin, with Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, and Nevada remaining uncalled. Biden had a 1% lead in Nevada and maintained a 2.3% lead in Arizona by November 5, needing only to win Nevada and Arizona or to win Pennsylvania to obtain the necessary 270 electoral votes.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Late counting
Some Trump supporters expressed concerns of possible fraud after seeing the president leading in some states on Election Night, only to see Biden take the lead in subsequent days. Election experts attributed this to several factors, including a "red mirage" of early results being counted in relatively thinly-populated rural areas that favored Trump, which are quicker to count, followed later by results from more heavily populated urban areas that favored Biden, which take longer to count.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Late counting
In some states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Republican-controlled legislatures prohibited mail-in ballots from being counted before Election Day, and once those ballots were counted they generally favored Biden, at least in part because Trump had for months raised concerns about mail-in ballots, causing those ballots to favor Biden even more.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Late counting
By contrast, in states such as Florida, which allowed counting of mail-in ballots for weeks prior to Election Day, an early blue shift giving the appearance of a Biden lead was later overcome by in-person voting that favored Trump, resulting in the state being called for the president on Election Night.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Late counting
On November 5, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by the Trump campaign to stop vote-counting in Pennsylvania. The Trump campaign had alleged that its observers were not given access to observe the vote, but its lawyers admitted during the hearing that its observers were already present in the vote-counting room. Also that day, a state judge dismissed another lawsuit by the Trump campaign which alleged that in Georgia, late-arriving ballots were counted. The judge ruled no evidence had been produced that the ballots were late.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Late counting
Meanwhile, a state judge in Michigan dismissed the Trump campaign's lawsuit requesting a pause in vote-counting to allow access to observers, as the judge noted that vote-counting had already finished in Michigan. That judge also noted the official complaint did not state "why", "when, where, or by whom" an election observer was allegedly blocked from observing ballot-counting in Michigan.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Late counting
On November 6, Biden assumed leads in Pennsylvania and Georgia as the states continued to count ballots, and absentee votes in those states heavily favored Biden. Due to the slim margin between Biden and Trump in the state, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced on November 6 that a recount would be held in Georgia. At that point, Georgia had not seen "any widespread irregularities" in this election, according to the voting system manager of the state, Gabriel Sterling.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Late counting
Also on November 6, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued an order requiring officials in Pennsylvania to segregate late-arriving ballots, amid a dispute as to whether the state's Supreme Court validly ordered a 3-day extension of the deadline for mail-in ballots to arrive. Several Republican attorneys general filed amicus briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court in subsequent days agreeing with the Pennsylvania Republican Party's view that only the state legislature could change the voting deadline.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Late counting
By November 7, several prominent Republicans had publicly denounced Trump's claims of electoral fraud, saying they were unsubstantiated, baseless or without evidence, damaging to the election process, undermining democracy and dangerous to political stability while others supported his demand of transparency. According to CNN, people close to Donald Trump, such as his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and his wife Melania Trump, urged him to accept his defeat. While Donald Trump privately acknowledged the outcome of the presidential election, he nonetheless encouraged his legal team to continue pursuing legal challenges.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Late counting
Trump expected to win the election in Arizona, but when Fox News awarded said state to Biden, Trump became furious and claimed Biden's victory in Arizona was the result of fraud. Trump and his allies suffered approximately 50 legal losses in four weeks after starting their litigation. In view of these legal defeats, Trump began to employ "a public pressure campaign on state and local Republican officials to manipulate the electoral system on his behalf".


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Election protests
Protests against Trump's challenges to the election results took place in Minneapolis, Portland, New York, and other cities. Police in Minneapolis arrested more than 600 demonstrators for blocking traffic on an interstate highway. In Portland, the National Guard was called out after some protesters smashed windows and threw objects at police. At the same time, groups of Trump supporters gathered outside of election centers in Phoenix, Detroit, and Philadelphia, shouting objections to counts that showed Biden leading or gaining ground. In Arizona, where Biden's lead was shrinking as more results were reported, the pro-Trump protesters mostly demanded that all remaining votes be counted, while in Michigan and Pennsylvania, where Trump's lead shrank and disappeared altogether as more results were reported, they called for the count to be stopped.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, False claims of fraud
Trump and a variety of his surrogates and supporters made a series of observably false claims that the election was fraudulent. Claims that substantial fraud was committed have been repeatedly debunked. On November 9 and 10, The New York Times called the offices of top election officials in every state; all 45 of those who responded said there was no evidence of fraud. Some described the election as remarkably successful considering the coronavirus pandemic, the record turnout, and the unprecedented number of mailed ballots. On November 12, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a statement calling the 2020 election "the most secure in American history" and noting "[t]here is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, False claims of fraud
As ballots were still being counted two days after Election Day, Trump asserted without evidence that there was "tremendous corruption and fraud going on", adding: "If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us." Trump has repeatedly claimed that the results of mail-in ballots showing significantly more support for Biden is suspicious. This is a common phenomenon known as the blue shift, since more Democrats than Republicans tend to vote by mail, and mail ballots are counted after Election Day in many states. Leading up to the 2020 election, the effect was predicted to be even greater than usual, as Trump's attacks on mail-in voting may have deterred Republicans from casting mail ballots.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, False claims of fraud
Many claims of purported voter fraud were discovered to be false or misleading. In Fulton County, Georgia the number of votes affected was 342, with no breakdown of which candidates they were for. A viral video of a Pennsylvania poll worker filling out a ballot was found to be a case of a damaged ballot being replicated to ensure proper counting, while a video claimed to show a man taking ballots illegally to a Detroit counting center was found to be actually depicting a photographer transporting his equipment.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, False claims of fraud
Another video of a poll watcher being turned away in Philadelphia was found to be real, but the poll watcher had subsequently been allowed inside after a misunderstanding had been resolved. A tweet that went viral claimed 14,000 votes in Wayne County, Michigan, were cast by dead people, but the list of names included was found to be incorrect. The Trump campaign and Tucker Carlson also claimed a James Blalock had voted in Georgia despite having died in 2006, though his 94-year-old widow had registered and voted as Mrs. James E. Blalock.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, False claims of fraud
In Erie, Pennsylvania, a postal worker who claimed the postmaster had instructed postal workers to backdate ballots mailed after Election Day later admitted he had fabricated the claim. Prior to his recantation, Republican senator Lindsey Graham cited the claim in a letter to the Justice Department calling for an investigation, and the worker was praised as a patriot on a GoFundMe page created in his name that raised $136,000.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, False claims of fraud
Days after Biden had been declared the winner, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany asserted without evidence that the Democratic Party was welcoming fraud and illegal voting. Republican former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich stated on Fox News, "I think that it is a corrupt, stolen election." Appearing at a press conference outside a Philadelphia landscaping business as Biden was being declared the winner, Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani asserted without evidence that hundreds of thousands of ballots were questionable. Responding to Giuliani, a spokesperson for Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said "Many of the claims against the commonwealth have already been dismissed, and repeating these false attacks is reckless. No active lawsuit even alleges, and no evidence presented so far has shown, widespread problems."


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, False claims of fraud
One week after the election, Republican Philadelphia city commissioner Al Schmidt said he had not seen any evidence of widespread fraud, stating, "I have seen the most fantastical things on social media, making completely ridiculous allegations that have no basis in fact at all and see them spread." He added that his office had examined a list of dead people who purportedly voted in Philadelphia but "not a single one of them voted in Philadelphia after they died." Trump derided Schmidt, tweeting, "He refuses to look at a mountain of corruption & dishonesty. We win!"


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, False claims of fraud
Attorneys who brought accusations of voting fraud or irregularities before judges were unable to produce actual evidence to support the allegations. In one instance, a Trump attorney sought to have ballot counting halted in Detroit on the basis of a claim by a Republican poll watcher that she had been told by an unidentified person that ballots were being backdated; Michigan Court of Appeals judge Cynthia Stephens dismissed the argument as "inadmissible hearsay within hearsay". Some senior attorneys at law firms working on Trump's behalf, notably Jones Day, expressed concerns that they were helping to undermine the integrity of American elections by advancing arguments lacking evidence.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, False claims of fraud
Trump and his lawyers Giuliani and Sidney Powell repeatedly made the false claim that the Toronto, Ontario-based firm Dominion Voting Systems, which had supplied voting machines for 27 states, was a "communist" organization controlled by billionaire George Soros, former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez (who died in 2013), or the Chinese Communist Party, and that the machines had "stolen" hundreds of thousands of votes from Trump. The false claims about the company circulated on social media, amplified by more than a dozen tweets or retweets by Trump. The disinformation campaign prompted threats and harassment against Dominion employees.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, False claims of fraud
A December 2020 poll showed 77% of Republicans believe widespread fraud occurred during the election. 35% of independent voters also said they believe widespread voter fraud took place. Overall, 60% of Americans believed Biden's win was legitimate, 34% did not, and 6% were unsure. Another poll taken in late December showed a similar result, with 62% of Americans polled believing Biden was the legitimate winner of the election, while 37% did not.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, False claims of fraud
This split in popular opinion remained largely stable, with a January 10, 2021, poll commissioned by ABC News showing 68% of Americans believed Biden's win was legitimate and 32% did not. These numbers remained largely stagnant, with a June 2021 poll from Monmouth showing 61% believed Biden won fair and square, 32% believed he won due to fraud, and 7% were unsure.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, False claims of fraud
Motivated by the myth of widespread fraud, Republican state lawmakers initiated a push to make voting laws more restrictive.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Lawsuits
After the election, the Trump campaign filed a number of lawsuits in multiple states, including Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Lawyers and other observers noted the suits were unlikely to have an effect on the outcome. Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt said, "There's literally nothing that I've seen yet with the meaningful potential to affect the final result." Some law firms have moved to drop their representation in lawsuits challenging results of the election.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Lawsuits
On December 20, Giuliani filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking them to overturn the results of the Pennsylvania election and direct the state legislature to appoint electors. The Supreme Court was regarded as very unlikely to grant this petition, and even if they did, it would not alter the election outcome, since Biden would still have a majority of Electoral College votes without Pennsylvania. The Court set the deadline for reply briefs from the respondents for January 22, 2021, two days after President Elect Biden's inauguration.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Lawsuits, Texas v. Pennsylvania
On December 9, Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of Texas, filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of the United States, asking the court to overturn the results in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia. Attorneys general of seventeen other states also signed onto the lawsuit. 126 Republicans in the House of Representatives, more than two-thirds of the Republican caucus, signed an amicus brief in support of the lawsuit. The suit was rejected by the Supreme Court on December 11.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Trump's refusal to concede
Early in the morning on November 4, with vote counts still going on in many states, Trump claimed he had won. For weeks after the networks had called the election for Biden, Trump refused to acknowledge that Biden had won. Biden described Trump's refusal as "an embarrassment". In the wake of the election, the General Services Administration (GSA) refused to formally acknowledge Biden's victory, and the White House ordered government agencies not to cooperate with the Biden transition team in any way. Starting in 1896, when William Jennings Bryan established a precedent of formal concession by sending a congratulatory telegram to President-elect William McKinley, every losing major party presidential candidate has formally conceded.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Trump's refusal to concede
Trump acknowledged Biden's victory in a tweet on November 15, although he refused to concede and blamed his loss on fraud, stating: "He won because the Election was Rigged." Trump then tweeted: "I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go."


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Trump's refusal to concede
In a June 2021 interview with Sean Hannity, Trump stated that "we didn't win" and said that he wished President Biden success in international diplomacy, which Forbes interpreted as Trump "[coming] as close as he’s ever been to conceding his 2020 election loss."


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, GSA delays certifying Biden as president-elect
Although all major media outlets called the election for Biden on November 7, the head of the General Services Administration (GSA), Trump appointee Emily W. Murphy, refused for over two weeks to certify Biden as the president-elect. Without formal GSA certification or "ascertainment" of the winner of the election, the official transition process was delayed. On November 23, Murphy acknowledged Biden as the winner and said the Trump administration would begin the formal transition process. Trump said he had instructed his administration to "do what needs to be done" but did not concede, and indicated he intended to continue his fight to overturn the election results.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Suggestion to have state legislatures choose Electoral College voters
Both before and after the election, Trump and other Republican leaders publicly considered asking certain Republican-controlled state legislatures to select electors for Trump rather than Biden, even in the event of a Biden victory in those states. In Pennsylvania, a state which Biden won despite its legislature being controlled by Republicans, the president's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani asked a federal judge to consider ordering the state legislature to ignore the state's popular vote and select electors for Trump.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Suggestion to have state legislatures choose Electoral College voters
Legal experts, including New York University law professor Richard Pildes, have said such a strategy would run into numerous legal and political problems, noting that in various battleground states, Democratic Party members elected to statewide offices would thwart such efforts, and ultimately Congress likely would not accept the votes of legislatively appointed electors over those appointed based on the election results.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Suggestion to have state legislatures choose Electoral College voters
Lawrence Lessig noted that while the Constitution grants state legislatures the power to determine how electors are selected, including the power to directly appoint them, Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 gives Congress the power to determine when electors must be appointed, which they have designated to be Election Day, meaning that legislatures cannot change how electors are appointed for an election after this date. In modern times, most states have used a popular vote within their state as the determining factor in who gets all the state's electors, and changing election rules after an election has been conducted could also violate the Constitution's Due Process Clause.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Attempts to delay or deny election results
In November, Trump focused his efforts on trying to delay vote certifications at the county and state level. On December 2, Trump posted a 46-minute video to his social media in which he repeated his baseless claims that the election was "rigged" and fraudulent and called for either the state legislatures or the courts to overturn the results of the election and allow him to stay in office. He continued to apply pressure to elected Republicans in Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania in an unprecedented attempt to overturn the election result. Some commentators have characterized Trump's actions as an attempted coup d'état or self-coup.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Attempts to delay or deny election results
On December 15, the day after the electoral college vote, Republican Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, who was previously among those who would not recognize the election results, publicly accepted Biden's win, saying "Today, I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden."


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Attempts to delay or deny election results
Multiple news media outlets reported that at a December 18 meeting in the White House, there was discussion of Michael Flynn's suggestion to overturn the election by invoking martial law and rerunning the election in several swing states under military supervision. Army Secretary Ryan D. McCarthy and Army Chief of Staff General James McConville later issued a joint statement saying: "There is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election." In a December 20 tweet, Trump dismissed the accusations of wanting to declare martial law as "fake news".


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Attempts to delay or deny election results
In a December 21 news conference, outgoing Attorney General William Barr disavowed several actions reportedly being considered by Trump, including seizing voting machines, appointing a special counsel to investigate voter fraud, and appointing one to investigate Hunter Biden.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Attempts to delay or deny election results
On January 6, 2021, shortly after a rally held by Trump where he continued to press false claims of election fraud, a crowd of Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol, interrupting the Joint session of the United States Congress where the official Electoral College ballots were being certified. The crowd caused widespread damage to the Capitol and forced lawmakers to evacuate the chambers where debate was occurring.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Attempts to delay or deny election results
As part of an organized effort by Republican lawmakers to challenge the results in close states, the House and the Senate were meeting separately to debate the results of Arizona's election and accepting the electoral college ballots submitted. Several other challenges were also planned.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Attempts to delay or deny election results
After the interruption, while leaders of both parties, including Vice President Pence, Speaker Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader McConnell, all denounced the disruption and called on lawmakers to confirm the results, several Republicans pressed forward with their challenges, though they were unsuccessful in changing any of the electoral college results, and the official vote was certified in the early morning hours of January 7.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Pressure on state and local officials
As the Trump campaign's lawsuits were repeatedly rejected in court, Trump personally communicated with Republican local and state officials in at least three states, including state legislators, attorneys general, and governors who had supported him in the general election and continued to support him. He pressured them to overturn the election results in their states by recounting votes, throwing out certain votes, or getting the state legislature to replace the elected Democratic slate of Electoral College members with a Republican slate of electors chosen by the legislature.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Pressure on state and local officials
In late November, he personally phoned Republican members of two county electoral boards in Michigan, trying to get them to reverse their certification of the result in their county. He then invited members of the Michigan state legislature to the White House, where they declined his suggestion that they choose a new slate of electors. He repeatedly spoke to the Republican governor of Georgia and the secretary of state, demanding that they reverse their state's election results, threatening them with political retaliation when they did not, strongly criticizing them in speeches and tweets, and demanding that the governor resign.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Pressure on state and local officials
During the first week of December, Trump twice phoned the speaker of the Pennsylvania state House of Representatives, urging him to appoint a replacement slate of electors; the speaker said he did not have that power but later joined in a letter encouraging the state's representatives in Congress to dispute the results. On January 4 The Washington Post reported that in a phone call on January 2, Trump pressured Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to overturn the state's result, telling him "I just want to find 11,780 votes" and threatening him with legal action if he did not cooperate.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Pressure on state and local officials
On January 4, 2021, Democratic congressional leaders, believing Trump "engaged in solicitation of, or conspiracy to commit, a number of election crimes", requested the FBI to investigate the incident. In addition, while some House Republicans tried to defend Trump's Georgia call, Democrats began drafting a censure resolution. Two months later The Washington Post acknowledged that they had originally used quotes not actually said by Trump, and added a correction to the article. Also on January 2, 2021, Trump took part in a mass phone call with nearly 300 state legislators from Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, in which he urged them to "decertify" the election results in their states.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Recounts
On November 11, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger ordered a statewide hand recount of the vote in addition to the normal audit process. At the time, Biden held a lead of 14,112 votes, or 0.3% in the state. The audit was concluded on November 19 and affirmed Biden's lead by 12,670 votes. The change in the count was due to a number of human errors, including memory cards that did not upload properly to the state servers, and was not attributable to any fraud in the original tally.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Recounts
After certifying the results Republican Governor Brian Kemp called for another hand audit, demanding to compare signatures on absentee ballot requests to actual ballots, despite the fact that this request was impossible, as signatures on mail-in ballot applications and envelopes are checked when they are originally received by election offices, and that ballots are thereafter separated from envelopes to ensure the secrecy of the ballot. The Trump campaign requested a machine recount, which was estimated to cost taxpayers $200,000 in one Georgia county alone. This recount reaffirmed Biden's victory in the state for the third time.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Recounts
Trump unsuccessfully sought to overturn Biden's win in Georgia through litigation; suits by the Trump campaign and allies were rejected by both the Georgia Supreme Court and by federal courts. Trump also sought to overturn Biden's win by pressuring Kemp to call a special session of the Georgia General Assembly so state legislators could override the Georgia election results and appoint a pro-Trump slate of electors, an entreaty rebuffed by Kemp.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Recounts
On November 18, the Trump campaign wired $3 million to pay for partial recounts in Milwaukee County and Dane County, Wisconsin, where Milwaukee and Madison, the two largest cities in the state and Democratic strongholds, are located. During the recount, Milwaukee County election commissioner Tim Posnanski said several Republican observers were breaking rules by posing as independents. The recount started November 20 and concluded on November 29, with the recount increasing Biden's lead by 87 votes.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Electoral College votes
The presidential electors met in the state capitol of each state and in the District of Columbia on December 14, 2020, and formalized Biden's victory, casting 306 votes for Biden/Harris and 232 votes for Trump/Pence. Unlike the 2016 election, there were no faithless electors. In six swing states won by Biden, groups of self-appointed Republican "alternate electors" met on the same day to vote for Trump. These alternate slates were not signed by the governors of the states they claim to represent, did not have the backing of any state legislature, and have no legal status.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Electoral College votes
Even after the casting of the electoral votes and rejection of his lawsuits seeking to overturn the election by at least 86 judges, Trump refused to concede defeat. In a speech following the Electoral College vote, Biden praised the resiliency of U.S. democratic institutions and the high election turnout (calling it "one of the most amazing demonstrations of civic duty we've ever seen in our country") and called for national unity.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Electoral College votes
Biden also condemned Trump, and those who backed his efforts to subvert the election outcome, for adopting a stance "so extreme that we've never seen it before – a position that refused to respect the will of the people, refused to respect the rule of law and refused to honor our Constitution" and for exposing state election workers and officials to "political pressure, verbal abuse and even threats of physical violence" that was "simply unconscionable".


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Certification of Electoral College votes
The 117th United States Congress first convened on January 3, 2021, and was scheduled to count and certify the Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021. There were 222 Democrats and 212 Republicans in the House; there were 51 Republicans, 46 Democrats and two independents in the Senate. Several Republican members of the House and Senate said they would raise objections to the reported count in several states, meeting the requirement that if a member from each body objects, the two houses must meet separately to discuss whether to accept the certified state vote. A statement from the vice president's office said Pence welcomes the plan by Republicans to "raise objections and bring forward evidence" challenging the election results.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Certification of Electoral College votes
On December 28, 2020, Representative Louie Gohmert filed a lawsuit in Texas challenging the constitutionality of the Electoral Count Act of 1887, claiming Vice President Pence has the power and ability to unilaterally decide which slates of electoral votes get counted. The case was dismissed on January 1, 2021, for lack of both standing and jurisdiction. The plaintiffs filed an appeal, and the appeal was dismissed by a three-judge panel of the appeals court the next day.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Certification of Electoral College votes
As vice president, Pence was due to preside over the January 6, 2021, congressional session to count the electoral votes, which is normally a non-controversial, ceremonial event. In January 2021, Trump began to pressure Pence to take action to overturn the election, demanding both in public and in private that Pence use his position to overturn the election results in swing states and declare Trump and Pence the winners of the election. Pence demurred that the law does not give him that power.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Certification of Electoral College votes
Starting in December, Trump called for his supporters to stage a massive protest in Washington, D.C. on January 6 to argue against certification of the electoral vote, using tweets such as "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!" D.C. police were concerned, and the National Guard was alerted because several rallies in December had turned violent. On January 6, Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, stopping the count of the votes and prompting an evacuation of press and lawmakers. The group entered the House and Senate chambers and vandalized offices.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Certification of Electoral College votes
Five people died as a result of the events in the Capitol: one person was shot by police, one Capitol Police officer died from a stroke after physically engaging with rioters, one person died of a heart attack, another of a stroke, and the final person's death is still under investigation. Trump has been accused of inciting the violence with his rhetoric, an accusation that was reinforced with an article of impeachment filed on January 13 for "incitement of insurrection".


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Certification of Electoral College votes
Congress reconvened that same night, after the Capitol was cleared of trespassers. The Senate resumed its session at around 8:00 p.m. on January 6 to finish debating the objection to the Arizona electors. Objections to the Pennsylvania electors were also considered. The joint session completed its work shortly before 4:00 a.m. on Thursday, January 7, declaring Biden the winner.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Post-certification
On January 11, 2021, Representative Cori Bush filed a resolution calling for the possible expulsion of more than 100 Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives who voted against certifying results of the presidential election, and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said the Senate Ethics Committee "must consider the expulsion, or censure and punishment, of Senators Cruz, Hawley, and perhaps others."


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Post-certification
On March 31, 2021, the Republican caucus of the Arizona State Senate hired several outside firms to examine the results of the presidential and senatorial elections in Maricopa County, where Biden had won by a large margin. There had been three previous audits and recounts of that county's results. The examination was initially funded by $150,000 from the State Senate operating budget; additional funding was to come from outside sources.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Post-certification
In July the lead firm conducting the review released a summary of major donors, indicating $5.7 million was raised from five groups associated with individuals who had cast doubt on the presidential election. The audit began on April 22, 2021 and was expected to last 60 days. The investigation was still ongoing in August when a judge issued an order for the release of documents. On September 24th, a preliminary release of the audit claimed to have found minor discrepancies in the original, state-certified count, which had actually widened Biden's margin by 360 votes.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Post-certification
On May 10, 2021, over 120 retired U.S. generals and admirals published an open letter alleging that there had been "election irregularities," suggesting that the election had not been "fair and honest" and did not "accurately reflect the ‘will of the people', and arguing for tighter restrictions on voting."


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Post-certification
On May 12, 2021, U.S. Representative Liz Cheney was removed from her party leadership role as Chair of the House Republican Conference for continuing to assert that the election had been fair and that the election results were final.


2020 United States presidential election, Aftermath, Post-certification
Well into Biden's presidency, Trump continued to insist that he had actually won the 2020 election. As of August 2021, surveys found that a majority of Republicans believe it. A widespread rumor predicted that Trump would be somehow reinstated to the presidency in August 2021, although the predicted date of August 13 passed without incident.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama
The 2020 United States presidential election in Alabama took place on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, as part of the 2020 United States presidential election in which all 50 states and the District of Columbia participated. Alabama voters chose nine electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote pitting incumbent Republican President Donald Trump and his running mate, incumbent Vice President Mike Pence, against Democratic challenger and former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate, United States Senator Kamala Harris of California. Also on the ballot was the Libertarian nominee, psychology lecturer Jo Jorgensen and her running mate, entrepreneur and podcaster Spike Cohen. Write-in candidates were permitted without registration, and their results were not individually counted.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama
Prior to the election, all 14 news organizations making predictions considered this a state Trump would win, or otherwise a safe red state. A socially conservative Bible Belt state, Alabama has voted for the Republican candidate in every election since 1980 and has done so by double-digit margins in all of them except 1980, 1992, and 1996. Per exit polls by Edison Research, Biden's only strength came from African American voters with 89%; this strength was reflected in the majority-black counties of the Black Belt that Biden carried. Conversely, Trump dominated key Republican constituencies, including 92% among white born-again Evangelicals. Trump also carried 72 percent of Alabama's white vote overall, winning several suburban counties near Birmingham, Montgomery and Mobile with well over 70 percent of the vote.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama
This election marked the first time since 1992 that Alabama and neighboring Georgia did not vote for the same presidential candidate.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, Primary elections
The primary elections were held on Super Tuesday, March 3, 2020.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, Primary elections, Republican primary
As one of the Super Tuesday states, little campaigning has been done here, and the focus had been on the highly competitive Republican senatorial primary, which was expected to boost turnout.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, Primary elections, Republican primary
Former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld challenged incumbent president Donald Trump in the Republican primary in Alabama. Trump received 96.22% of the vote and all 50 delegates, while Weld received only 1.52% of the vote. Uncommitted votes made up the other 2.27%.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, Primary elections, Democratic primary
Joe Biden's victory in Alabama was near-guaranteed. Four years earlier, Hillary Clinton carried the state with 77.84% against Bernie Sanders and won every county and congressional district, a feat repeated by Biden. FiveThirtyEight, which made state-by-state predictions prior to the primaries, gave Biden a 92% chance at winning the Yellowhammer State, a landslide over Sanders' 5% chance. Aggregate polling from FiveThirtyEight right before election day showed Biden up with 40.2%, Sanders at 18.4%, Bloomberg at 15.9%, Warren at 10.9%, Gabbard at 0.5%, and other/undecided 14.1%. 270toWin had Biden ahead as well with 44.5% of support, 23.5 percentage points ahead of Bernie Sanders at 21%.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, Primary elections, Democratic primary
The week before, Biden swept the South Carolina primary by a 28.88% margin over Sanders, reviving Biden's candidacy after crushing losses in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. Additionally, the moderate wing of the primary, consisting of former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, representative Beto O'Rourke from Texas's 16th district, and Senator Kamala Harris from California coalesced behind and endorsed Biden while the progressive wing, consisting of Senators Sanders and Warren, remained fractured. Thus, right before Super Tuesday, Biden's support surged.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, General election, Fundraising
According to the Federal Election Commission, in 2019 and 2020, Donald Trump and his interest groups raised $4,412,645.01, Joe Biden and his interest groups raised $2,412,420.93, and Jo Jorgensen raised $8,172.29 from Alabama-based contributors.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, General election, Candidate ballot access
In addition, write-in candidates were allowed without registration, and their votes were not counted individually.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, General election, Electoral slates
Technically the voters of Alabama cast their ballots for electors, or representatives to the Electoral College, rather than directly for the President and Vice President. Alabama is allocated 9 electors because it has 7 congressional districts and 2 senators. All candidates who appear on the ballot or qualify to receive write-in votes must submit a list of 9 electors who pledge to vote for their candidate and their running mate. Whoever wins the most votes in the state is awarded all 9 electoral votes. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. Although electors are pledged to their candidate and running mate, they are not obligated to vote for them. An elector who votes for someone other than their candidate is known as a faithless elector. In the state of Alabama, a faithless elector's vote is counted and not penalized.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, General election, Electoral slates
The electors of each state and the District of Columbia met on December 15, 2020, to cast their votes for president and vice president. All 9 pledged electors cast their votes for President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. The Electoral College itself never meets as one body. Instead, the electors from each state and the District of Columbia met in their respective capitols. The electoral vote was tabulated and certified by Congress in a joint session on January 6, 2021 per the Electoral Count Act.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, General election, Electoral slates
These electors were nominated by each party in order to vote in the Electoral College should their candidate win the state:


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, General election, Results, Results by congressional district
Trump won 6 of 7 congressional districts. Trump's 81.2% in Alabama's 4th district was his best showing of any congressional district in the nation.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, General election, Exit polls, Edison
The following are estimates from exit polls conducted by the Edison Research for the National Election Pool (encompassing ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and NBC News) interviewing 1,201 Alabama voters, adjusted to match the actual vote count.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, General election, Exit polls, Associated Press
The following are estimates from exit polls conducted by the University of Chicago for the Associated Press interviewing 1,905 likely voters in Alabama, adjusted to match the actual vote count.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, Analysis
The Democratic Party dominated Alabama politics in the early 19th century. The party held an 84-year streak on the presidential ballot from 1876 and 1944, and did not vote for a Republican between 1872 and 1964. Congressional and local politics were effectively one-party systems as well even into the early 21st century. Yet, the Southern Strategy and realignment of political parties made the Republicans the prominent political party in the South as evangelical White Southerners realigned to the Republicans in response and opposition to the Democratic support of Civil Rights legislation.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, Analysis
Republican ascendance to the presidential ballot began in 1964, when conservative Barry Goldwater easily carried the state among others in the Deep South, despite Lyndon B. Johnson's nationwide landslide. Johnson wiped out Goldwater in most of the rest of the country  due to Johnson portraying Goldwater's views as anti-civil rights and pro-war, the former of which appealed more to the Southern states. Thus, this election marked a turning point in Alabama politics, creating a Republican advantage that slowly trickled downballot. As a consequence, today, it is now one of the quintessential Republican states in the South, and a Trump victory was near-guaranteed.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, Analysis
According to the Pew Research Center, Alabama is tied with neighboring Mississippi for the most religious state in the country: as of 2016, 77% of adults are "highly religious" and 82% believe in God. Just as with other Bible Belt states, the dominating evangelical population in rural and suburban Alabama more than offset any gains made by Vice President Biden. Biden did win Jefferson County, which encompasses the Yellowhammer State's largest city, Birmingham, by a margin of 13.15%. Birmingham was a potential host for the 2020 Democratic National Convention, but it was not chosen.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, Analysis
The rest of the counties he won were in the Black Belt, a Democratic enclave in Alabama due to high proportions of African Americans. Highly fertile black soil made this area a hotbed for slavery in the antebellum and Civil War days, and once these slaves were emancipated in 1865 and enfranchised in the 1960s, this collection of counties, all of which but Russell still being majority-Black, became solidly Democratic: seven of them gave 70% or more of their ballots to Biden, and two (Greene and Macon) gave him over 80%. However, the Great Migration saw most of these counties become rural and sparsely populated, with the exception of Montgomery County, home to the state capital of Montgomery.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, Analysis
Trump easily outperformed these wins with victories in every other metropolitan area and the Birmingham suburbs. He won, in order of population, Mobile, Madison, Shelby, Tuscaloosa, and Baldwin counties, all of which are heavy population centers with powerfully Republican suburbs. Nonetheless, Biden's performances in Madison County (home to Huntsville) and Shelby County were the best of any Democrat since that of Jimmy Carter in 1980. Trump also carried all rural counties outside of the Black Belt; 18 counties gave him over 80% of the vote. He also carried the two swing counties of Barbour and Conecuh. Trump's largest margin was in the historically Republican Winston County, where he received 90.35% of the vote.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, Analysis
Per exit polls by the Associated Press, Trump's strength in Alabama came from 88% of White born again/evangelical Christians, which comprised 53% of voters. Protestant voters backed Trump with 75% of the vote, Catholics with 59%, and other Christians with 63%. Expectedly, Biden had his greatest strength among other religious groups, whom he captured 56–43, and nonreligious voters, who backed him 60–38. 59% of voters believed abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, and these voters backed Trump by 84–15.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, Analysis
Other policy divides were also evident: 48% of voters supported COVID-19 restrictions over economic harm, while 50% supported the opposite. These groups backed Biden 68–30 and Trump 90–7, respectively. 70% of voters believed racism is a significant issue in American society, and these voters decided to back Biden 50–48, but were usurped by the other 30% of voters who believed the opposite and gave 94% of their support to Trump.


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, Analysis
As is the case in most Southern states, there was a stark racial divide in voting in this election, with Trump capturing 78% of white Alabamians and Biden winning 91% of black Alabamians. While Trump carried all gender, age, and education groups, Biden was most competitive among women (53% of voters, backing Trump 59–40), voters aged 18 to 29 (12% of voters, backing Trump 52–45), and postgraduates (11% of the electorate, backing Trump 53–44).


2020 United States presidential election in Alabama, Analysis
This election corresponded with the 2020 U.S. Senate election in Alabama, where incumbent Democrat Doug Jones – who was elected by a 21,924 vote margin in a 2017 special election – ran for a full six-year term but was defeated by Republican football coach Tommy Tuberville. Despite losing, Jones outperformed Biden by 5.1 percentage points.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska
The 2020 United States presidential election in Alaska took place on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, as part of the 2020 United States presidential election in which all 50 states and the District of Columbia participated. Alaska voters chose three electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote pitting incumbent Republican President Donald Trump and his running mate, incumbent Vice President Mike Pence, against Democratic challenger and former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate, United States Senator Kamala Harris of California. The Libertarian, Green, Constitution, and Alliance Party nominees were also on the ballot, as was an Independent candidate. Write-in candidates were required to file a declaration of intent with the Alaska Division of Elections at least five days before the election, and their results were not individually counted.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska
Prior to the election, 13 of 14 news organizations making predictions considered this a state Trump would win, or otherwise a red state. Since it was admitted into the Union in 1960, Alaska has voted for the Republican nominee in every single election except 1964 in Lyndon B. Johnson's nationwide landslide, when he carried it with 65.91% of the vote. However, polling and voting trends indicated a possibly competitive race; on the day of the election, FiveThirtyEight had Trump leading by an average of 7.7%, and 270toWin had him up by 5.6%. 58% of voters are registered as unaffiliated, undeclared, or Independent, the highest proportion of any state. The Senate and House of Representatives races down the ballot were also surprisingly competitive.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska
Despite not necessarily being a swing state, Alaska was also one of the last states to be called; the state did not start counting absentee ballots or early votes that were cast after October 29 until November 10. Mail-in votes only had to be received by November 13 for them to be counted, and counting had to be completed by November 18. As a result, Alaska was called for Trump on November 11.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska
He won the state by 10.06%, the closest margin in the state since 1992, when Republican George H. W. Bush beat Democrat Bill Clinton by a 9.17-point plurality in a three-way race with an unusually strong showing from an independent candidate, Ross Perot. Biden received the highest percentage of the vote for a Democrat in the state since 1964. It was also the first time a non-incumbent Democrat won over 40% of the vote in the state, and the second time any Democrat did so (after Barack Obama in 2012), since 1968.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska
Biden narrowly won Anchorage, the state's largest city, making him the first Democrat to do so since Johnson, which was in part attributable to Biden's outperformance in comparison to local Democrats and nationwide urban backlash against Trump more so than down-ballot Republicans. Biden also held traditionally Democratic strongholds in the state in the Bush; the Far North, consisting of the North Slope Borough, is the home of the Inupiat while the Southwest is dominated by Native American Yup'ik, Alutiiq, and Aleut communities. In 2019, Native Americans made up an estimated 15.6% of the state's population.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska
The Southeast, which encompasses Juneau and Sitka, was also carried by Biden. However, his victories in traditionally Democratic regions and in closely divided Anchorage were offset largely by Trump's landslide wins in the Kenai Peninsula and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, where he carried upwards of 70% of the vote in some regions. Trump also dominated the Interior and the city of Fairbanks, enough to award the state's three electoral votes to Trump. Alaska ultimately weighed in as 14.51 percentage points more Republican than the national average in 2020.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska
Alaska shifted 4.67% to the left from the 2016 election.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska, Primary elections, Canceled Republican primary
On September 21, 2019, the Alaska Republican Party became one of several state Republican parties to officially cancel their respective primaries and caucuses. Donald Trump's re-election campaign and GOP officials have cited the fact that Republicans canceled several state primaries when George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush sought a second term in 1992 and 2004, respectively; and Democrats scrapped some of their primaries when Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were seeking reelection in 1996 and 2012, respectively. Per The Green Papers, the party also argued that "When an incumbent Republican President is seeking the Republican nomination for President, a PPP [presidential preference poll] need not be conducted" and that "the incumbent Republican President will be the only "Qualified Presidential Candidate" in this case."


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska, Primary elections, Canceled Republican primary
Of the 29 total delegates, 3 is allocated to the at-large congressional district, 10 to at-large delegates, and another 3 are allocated to pledged party leaders and elected officials (PLEO delegates). 13 bonus delegates were allocated.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska, Primary elections, Canceled Republican primary
The state party still formally conducted the higher meetings in their walking subcaucus-type delegate selection system. The legislative district conventions were held on the four consecutive Saturdays from February 8 to 29 to select delegates to the Alaska State Republican Convention. At the Alaska State Republican Convention, which took place from April 2 to April 4, 2020, the state party formally bound all 29 of its national pledged delegates to Trump.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska, Primary elections, Canceled Republican primary
The 26 pledged delegates Alaska sent to the national convention were joined by 3 pledged PLEO delegates, consisting of the National Committeeman, National Committeewoman, and chairman of the Alaska Republican Party.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska, Primary elections, Democratic primary
The Alaska Democratic primary was originally scheduled for April 4, 2020. On March 23, due to concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic, the Alaska Democratic Party canceled in-person voting, but extended mail-in voting to April 10.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska, Primary elections, Libertarian nominee
No contest was held for the Libertarian Party's nomination in the state of Alaska. At the 2020 Libertarian National Convention, the Alaskan delegates cast their votes for Georgia politician John Monds, but on the third and fourth ballots voted for Jo Jorgensen, psychology senior lecturer at Clemson University. Jorgensen would become the party's nominee after being elected on the fourth ballot, her running mate being entrepreneur and podcaster Spike Cohen.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska, General election, Fundraising
According to the Federal Election Commission, in 2019 and 2020, of the candidates who were on the ballot, Donald Trump and his interest groups raised $1,487,277.13, Joe Biden raised $1,321,242.60, and Jo Jorgensen raised $7,420.85 from Alaska-based contributors. Don Blankenship, Brock Pierce, and Rocky De La Fuente, all of which were on the ballot, did not raise any money from the state.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska, General election, Candidate ballot access
In addition, write-in candidates were required to file a Declaration of Intent with the Alaska Division of Elections at least five days before the election. They were also obligated to file a financial disclosure statement. Write-in votes were not counted individually. The following candidates were given write-in access:


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska, General election, Electoral slates
Technically the voters of Alaska cast their ballots for electors, or representatives to the Electoral College, rather than directly for the President and Vice President. Alaska is allocated 3 electors because it has 1 congressional district and 2 senators. All candidates who appear on the ballot or qualify to receive write-in votes must submit a list of 3 electors who pledge to vote for their candidate and their running mate. Whoever wins the most votes in the state is awarded all 3 electoral votes. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. Although electors are pledged to their candidate and running mate, they are not obligated to vote for them. An elector who votes for someone other than their candidate is known as a faithless elector. In the state of Alaska, a faithless elector's vote is counted and not penalized.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska, General election, Electoral slates
The electors of each state and the District of Columbia met on December 15, 2020, to cast their votes for president and vice president. All 3 pledged electors cast their votes for President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. The Electoral College itself never meets as one body. Instead, the electors from each state and the District of Columbia met in their respective capitols. The electoral vote was tabulated and certified by Congress in a joint session on January 6, 2021, per the Electoral Count Act.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska, General election, Electoral slates
These electors were nominated by each party in order to vote in the Electoral College should their candidate win the state:


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska, General election, Delay in results
As expected, there was a nationwide delay in reporting election results, due to the extreme influx of absentee and mail-in ballots as a public health measure in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which infected at least 17,448 Alaskans and killed 84 by Election Day. Each state imposed its own election procedures, such as expanding absentee voting and increased sanitization of polling station supplies, causing varying delays depending on the state.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska, General election, Delay in results
In Alaska, these delays were especially severe, though they did not receive much attention due to the state's comparatively minor and uncompetitive electoral presence as opposed to many other slower-counting states. Alaska mailed absentee ballot applications to every voter aged 65 and over. Mail-in ballots only needed to be postmarked by Election Day and received by November 13 (November 18 for overseas voters), further delaying the count.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska, General election, Delay in results
Only early votes cast before October 29 and Election Day votes would be released on Election Night and the state could not even begin the counting of absentee ballots nor the remaining early votes until November 10. Counting was expected to be complete by November 18. By November 4, the state still had at least 122,233 absentee ballots to count. Alaska and New York are the only two states to begin counting absentee ballots after Election Day. Gail Felunumiai, Alaska's Director of Elections, attributed the delay to the need to verify that voters who voted by mail and also at their polling places did not have their ballots counted twice.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska, General election, Delay in results
Prior to the counting of absentee ballots, Trump led with 61.79% of the vote, resembling a "red mirage" effect seen in the rest of the country where Republicans initially overperformed due to the delayed counting of absentee and early votes, which leaned heavily Democratic – in Alaska specifically, Joe Biden won 54.78% of absentee ballots to Trump's 42.06%, narrowing up the margin as more votes were counted.


2020 United States presidential election in Alaska, General election, Delay in results
The delay in counting and the consequential red mirage effect also left many state legislative races undecided for weeks, with seven incumbent Democratic state legislators trailing in their re-election bids before the counting of absentee votes. The extreme rural nature of the state only worsened the delay: with many local communities being accessible only by boat or plane, seven communities had to vote entirely by absentee ballots in the primary due to a last-minute shortage of election workers. The Associated Press called the race for President Trump on November 11 at 12:16 PM EST (8:16 AM AKST), 4 days after President Biden won the national election.