THE 2020 ELECTION WASN'T CLOSE

I'm afraid that many Americans have been left with a false impression regarding the closeness of the recent Presidential contest between Biden and Trump. The notion that the vote was close is attributable to two factors: 1. The way that the vote totals were reported as a consequence of the large number of mail-in ballots because of the pandemic and 2. The hullabaloo created by Donald Trump surrounding spurious claims of fraud and a grand conspiracy to deprive him of victory. In short, the fact that the counting of votes has played out over weeks, and Trump's team has demanded several recounts and launched numerous legal challenges in a number of states has served to divert the public's attention from the actual results.

Nevertheless, despite all of the noise and distractions the counting continued and the results were tallied and are in the process of being certified. Unfortunately, Americans have a notoriously short attention span, and many of the partisans on both sides of the recent contest have largely already moved way beyond the actual results of it. Those results, however, tell a very different tale from the one that most Americans have accepted about the 2020 presidential election; and they deserve another look before we move ahead as a nation.

Joe Biden received 80.2 million votes (or 51.1% of the total), and Donald Trump received 74 million votes (or 47.1 % of the total). Stated another way, six million more Americans voted for Biden than voted for Trump! Where do these totals fit when we compare them to past elections? In 2016, Clinton received about 2.9 million more votes than Trump, but Trump ultimately prevailed in the Electoral College. In 2012, Obama received about 5 million more votes than Romney (Obama received about 51.1% of the total). Hence, we can see that the numbers Biden put on the board in 2020 are very respectable when compared to the previous two contests.

In terms of the Electoral College, Biden will receive 306 electors compared to 232 for Trump (the same margin of victory for Trump over Clinton). Biden won the popular vote in 25 of the 50 states (Trump carried 30 states in 2016). Biden's margins of victory in Michigan and Pennsylvania were significantly greater than Trump's in 2016. Moreover, Biden was able to squeeze out a narrow victory in Georgia and Arizona - two states that have voted Republican for many years).

Hence, we can see that the numbers suggest that Biden's victory over Trump in the 2020 election was decisive. By almost any standard which we could employ, this was NOT a close election! In fact, one might reasonably conclude that any suggestion that Trump won this contest (or that the result was even close) is delusional. In fact, when we look at just the numbers, we are forced to conclude that Donald Trump was soundly rejected for a second term as president!