The 2020 presidential election was not overly close. In critical states across the country, Donald Trump lost by significant margins — and these losing margins are not accounted for by the imaginary election fraud that Trump and his allies keep talking about. According to the Cook Political Report, President-elect Joe Biden’s lead in the national popular vote stood at about 5.37 million as of early Friday. That translates into 50.8 percent of the votes that had been tallied across the country up to that point going to Biden. (Trump was at 47.3 percent.)
States that Biden successfully flipped away from Trump include Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. As of early Friday, Biden’s biggest lead in any one of these flipped states was in Michigan, where he was up by a full 146,000 votes, or about 2.6 percent. That leading margin for Biden is many times larger than the leading margin with which Trump won the state in 2016, when he won by merely a little over 10,000 votes. It’s worth noting — Trump frequently spoke highly of the number of electoral votes that he won in 2016, although other recent presidents like Barack Obama got higher totals. This time around, Biden is on track to win the exact same number of electoral votes — 306 — that Trump won in 2016.
Biden’s leads in other swing states were smaller but still significant enough to solidly put him over the top. In Georgia, where Biden took a late lead as mail-in votes were tallied, the president-elect led by a little over 14,000 votes, or 0.3 percent, as of early Friday. Before Biden, the last time that a Democratic presidential candidate won Georgia was when Bill Clinton was on the ballot back in 1992. Before Clinton, the last time that Georgia went for the Democratic presidential nominee was when Jimmy Carter, who’s from the state, was on the ballot. Carter won the state in both of his successive national campaigns, although nationally, he lost the second time to Reagan.
Arizona is another longtime hotspot of Republican success that Biden flipped to the Democratic side in the 2020 race. Before Biden, the last time that a Democratic presidential candidate won the state was in 1996, when Bill Clinton was on the ballot for a second time. As of early Friday, Biden led in Arizona by about 11,400 votes, or 0.3 percent, according to the Cook Political Report. None of Biden’s leading margins in crucial swing states are within the range of tallies that could be changed by a recount.
