2020 Election Recap: Most Tumultuous Election of Our Time

With the inauguration of President Joe Biden on Jan. 20, 2021, the 2020 election season officially comes to an end, marking the end of one of the most tumultuous, most defining elections of our lifetimes. A record-breaking 158 million Americans voted in this election, and 74 million of them voted for the Donald Trump-Mike Pence ticket, and 81 million voted for the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris ticket. It was the first time in history any ticket surpassed 70 million votes.

The story of the 2020 presidential election begins way back. While Donald Trump and Mike Pence were already the presumptive nominee for the Republican ticket right from the get-go, since Trump was already the incumbent president, there were a whole host more candidates trying to compete on the Democratic side for the eventual Democratic candidate nomination.

Beginning in late 2017, even before the Trump midterm primaries in fall 2018, and culminating with the Democratic National Convention in August 2020, over 29 prospective Democrats tried to capture the party’s nomination to become a candidate for president of the United States, though only 11 even made it into the primaries.

Some top-name Democrats who ran campaigns but withdrew before the primaries include current Vice President Kamala Harris, then a senator from California; Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey; Julian Castro, a former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, and Obama’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; Gov. Steve Bullock, then Montana’s Democratic governor; Beto O’Rourke, a former representative from Texas and who ran against Sen. Ted Cruz but lost narrowly in 2018; Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York City; Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington; and John Hickenlooper, then a governor from Colorado and currently a senator from the same state.

The candidates that made it into the primaries include Joe Biden; Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont; Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts; Michael Bloomberg, a former mayor of New York City and a billionaire; Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota; Pete Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and currently the Secretary of Transportation-designate; Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii; Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur; Tom Steyer, a businessman; Deval Patrick, a former governor of Massachusetts; and Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado.

When the presidential primaries began with the Iowa Caucuses in February 2020, Sanders was widely seen as the frontrunner, with other candidates lagging behind. Despite placing fourth in the Iowa Caucuses and placing last in the New Hampshire primaries, Biden made an unexpected comeback when he won South Carolina in late February, promoting Steyer, Klobuchar, and Buttigieg, who placed well in both Iowa and New Hampshire, to drop out before Super Tuesday. Biden would then make a huge comeback on Super Tuesday by winning 10 states. Sanders was only able to win four. As candidates started dropping out of the race, it became clear that Biden would be the presumptive nominee, and after Sanders dropped out on April 8, Biden became the nominee, which was affirmed in the Democratic National Convention in August.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many states made arrangements to expand mail-in voting dramatically to avoid the spread of disease in polling stations. However, the Trump administration, as well as many Republicans, denounced mail voting, citing alleged “voter fraud” (which has been thoroughly debunked). Unfortunately, the Republicans have a long history of voter suppression, since lower turnout typically benefits the GOP, and this became yet another way Republicans tried to stop occurring in order to get fewer people to vote. This eventually resulted in a crisis at the U.S. Postal Service as Trump tried to sabotage the postal system in a frugal attempt to stop mail ballots from being delivered on time preemptively. However, many states, including swing states like Pennsylvania and Nevada, were successful in implementing widespread vote-by-mail systems, after courts overwhelmingly sided against the Republicans. The courts also reversed much of the Trump administration’s changes to the postal service.

In late September, The New York Times ran a massive report, leaking years of tax filings from Trump and his company, which he had refused to publicize before claiming an IRS “tax audit.” The report revealed that in many years, Trump paid zero dollars in income taxes, while in some years, he paid just $750 in income tax by making use of various loopholes.

The first presidential debate held in Cleveland between Biden and Trump on Sept. 29, 2020, was one of the most disorderly, chaotic presidential debates ever held in history. There was shouting and constant arguing, and at one point, Trump refused to denounce the white supremacy group Proud Boys, instead of telling them to “stand back and stand by.”

Between the time in the first and planned second debate, in early October, Trump and former first lady Melania Trump both tested positive for COVID-19, which caused an outcry among people that the administration had failed in handling the deadly pandemic, which, at this point in time, had killed well over 200,000 Americans and infected more than seven million. (For reference, the current case count in the U.S. is 24.8 million, with over 400,000 deaths.) This resulted in the second debate being canceled, and the third debate was held in a much more orderly fashion.

As early voting ended in late November, both campaigns vigorously campaigned in swing states, such as in the Rust Belt and Sun Belt regions, where the race was expected to be quite close. On Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020, the race was too close to call, leaving the race undecided. The Trump campaign, knowing that their odds were dwindling fast, tried to file a number of lawsuits and recounts in various swing states and demanding that ballots be stopped counting or thrown out, but all this was frugal, as The Associated Press eventually called the race for Joe Biden on Nov. 7.

The last state to be called was Georgia on Nov. 19, after a number of manual recounts, affirming Joe Biden’s 12,000-vote victory in the hotly contested swing state. Biden managed to flip back the Rust Belt states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which were won solidly by Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but which Hillary Clinton lost narrowly in 2016, and managed to also flip the longtime Republican stronghold states of Arizona and Georgia, both of which had not gone blue in decades. Biden also managed to flip Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district, which contains the city of Omaha. However, he was not able to flip North Carolina, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, or Texas, all states considered possibilities for pickups by Joe Biden.

Over 158 million people voted in this high-turnout election, with an estimated two-thirds voter turnout—the largest percentage since 1900. More than 100 million of these votes were cast early, and both tickets broke the 74 million-vote mark, a record-breaking number (the previous record was 69.5 million for Obama in his 2008 victory). 74 million people voted for the Trump-Pence ticket, while 81 million votes were cast for the Biden-Harris ticket, the most ever in history. Trump became the first president since 1992 and only the 11th president to lose reelection to a second term. Many bellwether states and counties broke their streaks in this election, partially due to political polarization.

8 victoAlthough polling had consistently indicated major leads for Joe Biden, with the FiveThirtyEight national polling average sitting at an 8.4-point lead on Election Day, Donald Trump once again outperformed the polls, narrowing this lead down to a five-point loss after all the ballots were counted. There seems to be a major polling error whenever Donald Trump is on the ballot, which may be because either his supporters are unwilling to admit they are voting for Trump, or simply because the type of person who came out to vote for Trump is not typically the type of person that votes, and only Trump was able to energize them. (Polling was very accurate in the 2018 midterms and the Georgia runoffs, none of which had Trump on the ballot.)

Even though the election is now, for all practical purposes, over, as we all know, the story of this election doesn’t end here. Although it was very clear after the AP called the race that there would be no way for Donald Trump to overturn the election results, he and his campaign continued to push baseless claims that the election was fraudulent and rigged against him. This is despite recount after recount in swing states like Georgia proving that the count was, in fact, accurate, and there were no cases of voter fraud regarding mail-in ballots. This continued push was feared by many GOP officials that it would hurt the party in the upcoming Georgia Senate runoffs, and their worst fears did come true: Democrats swept both races, winning control of the U.S. Senate.

The Trump campaign filed well over 50 lawsuits in federal and state courts, but almost all of them were turned down by judges and even when the cases were heard, Trump campaign lawyers failed to provide any evidence at all that the vote-counting process was rigged in any shape or form. Eventually, after months of relentless lawsuits, even the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a major lawsuit from the Republicans, sounding a death knell for the campaign’s attempts to overturn the election via the courts. Even then-Attorney General William Barr broke with Trump, admitting that there was no fraud, and the transition to the Biden presidency ultimately began in late November.

Another attempt by the Trump campaign to overturn the election was to try and get states with Republican-controlled legislatures, like Pennsylvania, to appoint, against the will of the people, pro-Trump electors that would vote faithlessly. This, of course, failed badly. Not a single elector went rogue this election (seven did in 2016). Biden won the Electoral College as expected.

As Inauguration Day drew near, there was one last hurdle for the American democracy system to overcome before finally proving that it would ultimately prevail: the certification of the Electoral College votes in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. Now, I’m sure that everyone reading this will know of what happened that fateful Wednesday. Since Trump held a rally on that day demanding to “stop the steal” and get Congress to overturn the electors’ votes. This ultimately caused a rioting mob to storm into the U.S. Capitol and start an armed insurrection. But even despite rioters entering the halls of Congress and threatening to completely undermine the American democratic system, democracy prevailed, as Congress held a session until 4 a.m. to certify all the electoral votes. (It took such a long time because even after the insurrection some hardcore Republican senators still objected to the certification. Obviously, the certification passed in the end, but it wasted a lot of time.)

After the insurrection, many began questioning Donald Trump’s role in the riots, and this led to the Democratic-controlled House to impeach Donald Trump for the second time in his four-year term after Big Tech began to block Donald Trump and his allies for inciting violence.

In the end, though, Inauguration Day came on Jan. 20 without a hitch, though the inauguration took place under heavy armed force presence. President-elect Joe Biden was officially sworn in as the 46th President of the United States at noon on that day, drawing the very long 2020 election season to an official close.

For full coverage of the 2020 election, refer to our 2020 election coverage page, where all posts pertaining to the election is linked to by publication date.