Biden Becomes First Presidential Candidate To Receive 80 Million Votes

Topline

As Donald Trump refuses to concede and accept the results of the 2020 election, President-Elect Joe Biden’s total tally of votes surpassed 80 million on Tuesday, the most ever cast for a presidential candidate in United States history, with Biden capturing a historically significant 51% of the country’s popular vote.

Key Facts

Surprising Fact:

Biden is the first presidential challenger to capture more than 50% of the popular vote while running against an incumbent since Franklin Delano Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover in 1932.

Key Background:

Despite losing, Trump also benefited from a remarkably engaged electorate in 2020. (In the process, Trump became the first president since Benjamin Harrison in 1892 to lose the popular vote twice in successive election cycles.) Nonetheless, Biden’s margin of victory is decisive. Biden’s leads in raw numbers (6.2 million) and the percentage of the popular vote (3.9%) are both larger than those of Obama’s victory over Mitt Romney in 2012. This is notable because Trump previously described Romeny’s loss as a “slaughtering,” declaring that “Romney lost so badly.” Biden is also on pace to secure 306 electoral votes. When Trump had the same number of electoral votes in 2016, he referred to the results as a “landslide,” a “blowout,” and a “historic” victory.   

Tangent:

The 2020 election marks the seventh time in the last eight presidential elections that the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote (1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012 and 2016). It’s the first time in history either party, Democrats or Republicans, can make that claim. 

Critical Quote:

“It’s just a lot of noise going on because Donald Trump is a bull who carries his own china shop with him,” Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University, told the Associated Press. “Once the noise recedes, it’s going to be clear that Biden won a very convincing victory.”

Further Reading:

Biden Leads By Same Margin Trump Once Called ‘One Of The Great Defeats’ In U.S. History (Forbes) 

Biden approaches 80 million votes in historic victory (AP)