United States presidential election of 2020

The 2020 United States Presidential Election was held in the United States on November 3, 2020. Voters elected a new president and vice president. Donald Trump, the forty-fifth president of the United States, had secured the Republican Party nomination along with incumbent vice president Mike Pence, the former governor of Indiana. Former vice president Joe Biden won the Democratic Party nomination and chose as his running mate California senator Kamala Harris. Harris became the first African American and Indian American vice-presidential candidate on a major party ticket. Biden won the Electoral College and the popular vote, but Trump initially refused to concede and filed lawsuits challenging the results in several states. Virtually all of these lawsuits were either thrown out for lack of evidence or dismissed in court, and Biden was inaugurated as the forty-sixth president of the United States on January 20, 2021.

Background

2016 United States Presidential Election. Donald Trump was elected the forty-fifth president of the United States on November 8, 2016, during the 2016 US presidential election. Trump ran against former secretary of state and first lady Hillary Clinton. Clinton, who ran with Virginia senator Tim Kaine, was the first female presidential candidate of a major party. Trump won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote to Clinton by nearly three million votes. His election angered some Americans, who pointed out that he had neither political nor military experience.

Trump’s campaign style was brash, and his critics said he was appealing to his supporters’ xenophobia and racism. Among his campaign promises was to “Make America Great Again.” He planned to build a wall along the US-Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it. Trump also opposed many of the country’s free-trade agreements. During her campaign, Clinton emphasized her substantial political experience and support of the rights of women, minorities, and members of the LGBTQ community.

The campaign was contentious, and many factors played into the final outcome of the election. On October 28, days before the election, FBI director James Comey sent a letter to Congress about the discovery of emails that he believed were relevant to the investigation into Clinton using a private email server when she was secretary of state. (Clinton was later cleared of deliberate wrongdoing in her handling of classified information.) Media reports about Comey’s letter caused Clinton to drop in the polls and may have imperiled her victory in the Electoral College. Prior to this, Clinton had a significant lead in all major polls. US intelligence agencies also concluded that Russia interfered in the election in favor of Trump’s candidacy.

Trump’s win was considered one of the greatest political upsets in the country’s history. His election outraged many Americans, in particular women who considered him misogynistic. The Women’s March, a worldwide protest, was held on January 21, 2017, the day after Trump’s inauguration. It was the largest one-day protest in US history.

Trump’s Presidency. Like his candidacy, Trump’s presidency was marked by controversy. Many considered him a divisive leader unfit to manage the country during times of crisis. Among his scandals was the 2018 family separation policy, in which immigrant children attempting to enter the country at the southwestern border were forcibly removed from their parents. The situation resulted from Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy for illegal immigrants attempting to enter the country, ordering them to be imprisoned and prosecuted. Because it was impractical to take such actions against parents with children in their care, agents separated families, often sending children to live in cages in warehouses throughout the United States. However, the US government did not keep adequate records of the location of the more than two thousand children, so it was unable to reunite them with their parents. Many of the children were instead entered into the US adoption system and placed with foster families. US human rights organizations and the media condemned the Trump administration for its handling of the immigrant children, and a nationwide injunction was issued to halt family separations.

Impeachment. On December 18, 2019, the House of Representatives approved articles of impeachment against Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The charges stemmed from Trump’s withholding of nearly four hundred million dollars in military aid to Ukraine prior to a telephone call with Ukraine’s newly elected president Volodymyr Zelensky. While Trump did not mention the military aid during the call, he asked Zelensky to conduct an investigation into possible wrongdoings committed in Ukraine by Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son. From 2014 to 2019, Hunter Biden had served on the board of directors for Burisma Holdings, a natural gas company in Ukraine. Trump also discussed Zelensky’s upcoming visit to the White House, which would have significantly bolstered his political status. While the members of the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump, in February 2020 the Republican-controlled Senate voted for his acquittal, and Trump was not removed from office.

Overview

Democratic Primaries. After Clinton’s loss in 2016, the Democratic Party was viewed by many as fractured and without a clear leader, unlike the Republican Party, which had consolidated around President Trump. Twenty-nine candidates initially sought the Democratic presidential nomination during the 2020 Democratic Party primaries. However, by February 3, 2020, the beginning of the Iowa caucuses, the number had dropped to eleven. In Iowa on February 3, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg narrowly defeated Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who went on to win the New Hampshire primary on February 11. Sanders also won the Nevada caucuses on February 22. Biden scored a major victory in South Carolina on February 29. After this, Buttigieg and Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden.

Biden took the lead on Super Tuesday, March 3, winning a majority of states including Texas, North Carolina, and Virginia. Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg subsequently dropped out of the race, which left two main contenders: Biden and Sanders. On April 8, Sanders dropped out, making Biden the presumptive nominee.

On August 11, Biden announced that Senator Kamala Harris, his former opponent in the primaries, would be his running mate.

COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic significantly altered how the candidates campaigned during the 2020 presidential election and became a campaign issue. Starting in mid-March 2020, most in-person campaign events and rallies were suspended to prevent further spread of the virus. By mid-2020, Americans’ views of the pandemic and the Trump administration’s response to it had largely split along party lines, with a majority of Democrats anticipating that the pandemic would worsen and a majority of Republicans feeling that the pandemic was a less serious issue, and that the Democrats were manipulating it for political gain. On June 20, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the Trump campaign could hold a rally in Tulsa, but attendance was very low. The speakers at the Democratic National Convention (August 17 to August 20) and the Republic National Convention (August 24 to August 27) participated remotely.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, signed into law by Trump in March, included money for states to expand mail-in voting. During the presidential primaries, voters had to stand in long lines at polling places while maintaining social distancing. After this, many states encouraged voting by mail as an easier and a safer alternative.

Both the House and the Senate struggled to agree on the contents of a second stimulus package to aid Americans during the pandemic. At issue was the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC), which provided an additional six hundred dollars per week in addition to state-funded unemployment benefits. When no agreement had been reached between the House and the Senate by August 7, when Congress was set to adjourn for a month-long recess, Trump issued executive orders for a payroll tax cut, enhanced unemployment benefits (to be partially funded by states and in a lower amount than was provided by the CARES Act), student loan relief, and an eviction moratorium. However, the relief he issued fell well below the amount that Congress was deliberating.

Mail-in Voting. Voting procedures changed in light of the pandemic. By mid-August 2020, mail-in (absentee) voting during the pandemic was considered safer and more convenient than having to wait in long lines at polling places due to social distancing requirements. While Democrats supported the modification during the pandemic, Republicans and the Trump administration vehemently opposed it, contending that mailing in ballots would result in voter fraud.

The May 2020 appointment of Louis DeJoy as postmaster general further complicated the issue. DeJoy was accused of making changes within the US Postal Service (USPS) to deliberately slow mail service, thus making mail-in voting seem like an unfavorable option. DeJoy was a former logistics executive and an ardent Trump supporter and donor. Many viewed his appointment as a conflict of interest because he owned stock in both UPS and Amazon.

Democrats claimed that by fighting against mail-in voting, Republicans were trying to suppress voter turnout, increasing Trump’s chance of winning. By mid-August, thirty-five states had made modifications to give voters the option of mailing in their ballots. Trump threatened to block funding to the Post Office, thus threatening the efficient management of mailed ballots. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Congress to return to Washington from its recess to address the Post Office crisis.

Drop Boxes. Given the Post Office crisis, many voters who had requested mail-in or absentee ballots opted to hand deliver them to ballot drop boxes or election offices. Meanwhile, Republican state officials and the Trump campaign sought to reduce the number of drop boxes available in Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. In October 2020, the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, ordered ballot drop boxes for absentee ballots to be removed, save for one box per county, in order, he said, to preserve election integrity. Abbott’s order prompted voting rights advocates to accuse the governor of voter suppression and file lawsuits. Although a state judge lifted Abbott’s order, a federal court reversed the lower court’s ruling and allowed Abbott’s order to stand. That same month, voting rights advocates dropped a suit against ballot box limits imposed by Ohio’s Republican secretary of state Frank LaRose, while a federal judge dismissed the Trump campaign’s lawsuit to bar the use of ballot boxes in Pennsylvania.

Early Voting. Forty-five states and Washington, DC, allowed some form of early voting for the 2020 presidential election. By November 2, the eve of Election Day 2020, US voters cast more than 97 million ballots, including more than 62 million absentee ballots. In the 2016 presidential election, there were almost 43 million early votes out of about 166 million votes total. Hawaii and Texas exceeded their 2016 election vote totals and several other states exceeded 90 percent of their 2016 totals.

Election Results. By Election Day, almost 30 million absentee and mail-in ballots had yet to be returned by voters. President Trump claimed, without offering any evidence, that such ballots were fraudulent. He also claimed that only ballots counted by the end of Election Day should count, contrary to established law. To be considered valid, absentee and mail-in ballots had to be postmarked by November 3, 2020, and it took several days past Election Day to count them in sufficient numbers to project the outcome of the election. On November 7, CNN was the first of multiple media outlets to project that Joe Biden was the winner of the Electoral College once the results from Pennsylvania were tallied and put him past the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency. Once the remaining states states reported their results, Biden cemented his Electoral College victory with wins in Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia, bringing his total number of Electoral College votes to 306. Trump's wins in North Carolina and Alaska brought his total number of Electoral College votes to 232, far short of the required 270 for victory. High voter turnout, the largest in US history, also led to record-breaking results for each candidate; Biden won the popular vote with over 81 million votes, the most a candidate had ever received in a presidential election, and Trump received over 74 million votes, the second-most a candidate had ever received.

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